The death and life of Yahoo! Groups communities

[chimerically]

I'm very excited about my work at Yahoo! this summer. I'll be doing research on Yahoo! Groups, following up on some of the quantitative surveys being conducted by a few others in Yahoo! Research with more in-depth, mostly qualitative investigations. Though I strongly disapprove of some of their policies (and I wish I had my TV-B-Gone for the two very annoying TVs in the cafeteria!), nowhere else would I have this kind of opportunity to do open-ended research on such a large, diverse, active, and long-lived online community. There are millions of groups, and the archives go back ten years! Some Yahoo! groups are incredibly active ... even Craigslist was a Yahoo! group way back when. Where else could I get something like that?

Such opportunity is at once exhilarating and completely overwhelming. With a data set that big, where should I start? What should I focus in on? I spent a week just reading about other community research my boss threw my way and brainstorming long lists of ideas. Finally we decided that it would make sense to start with an investigation of how various groups form, grow, and, in some cases, die -- in itself a complicated question, of course, but still something around which we can focus investigations. I imagine that once we start playing around with the data, other research directions will become apparent. This seems to be the way I like to work anyway, whether in research or programming or usability: I assume that it's impossible to anticipate everything that I'll want to do, so I just jump in early, get my hands dirty, and iterate. I'll do my best to write periodic updates on what I'm learning.

Oh, and the title above is my working moniker for the project. Tipped hat to the late Jane Jacobs (one of the main inspirations for my undergrad research project on "healthy cities").

Comments

[stridera.livejournal.com]

Sounds like quite the project. While I haven't been too involved in Yahoo groups, per se, I have been active in my share of online communities. Mostly it's IRC or specialized forums (2600, C++, animesuki)... In my experience, however, the biggest factor is the people. It's hard to quantify that though. I guess it's mostly seen by a elect group of individuals who post constantly. In IRC there was a small group of us that were continuously active. We kept the channel alive. There were some regulars that weren't as active that joined in, but rarely did any big conversations happen without the main group. The same thing can be seen in programming/hacking groups. Most threads were started and consisted of almost entirely an elect group of people. Random people would post questions, and the main group of us would answer them. I think the thing that would kill most groups is members of that main group going on hiatus. When I left for Iraq, two others in one of my main channels left for school. For a while there, the group was dangerously close to disappearing. Even now, it's not quite what it used to be.

So, that's my idea. I might be totally wrong since this is all from personal experience with my own groups, but I thought it might help some. I'd be interested to see how close I am. Just look at a bunch of different test cases and see if the same people are what keeps the community alive.

Good luck with it!

[cyberlyra.livejournal.com]

yay! study the harplist! we've been active since ... um. .. 1992? and moved to yahoo groups my goodness, ten years ago maybe? very active global community... and you have an 'in'. :)

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