Success Factors of Communities for User Driven Content: the Case of Ciao.com

Virtual communities that produce “user driven content” are a relatively new phenomenon. In this study we present the findings of an exploratory empirical study that focus on the success factors that stimulate content production from the perspective of community members. One main finding is that methods or tools that advance the transparency of what is going on in the community platform results in more content production. This accents the importance of new tools like RSS for example. Furthermore an ambiguous role of sociological motives was found. On the one hand there is statistical evidence that sociological motives and content production activities are closely linked. But on the other hand our descriptive data indicates only very weak sociological forces at work. We discuss some causes that may explain this result.