In this blog I was interested in what motivates people to participate in social media. So I was searching the net for some answers because the time was too short to make some self study.
I found two points of view in two blogs which give some ideas what people motivates to participate in social media.
Amitha Amarasinghe writes in his post “What Motivates People to Participate in Social Media?" about intrinsic and extrinsic factors wherefrom the intention can arise (see Figure 1).
Intrinsic motivation comes within the individual from the pleasure of completing the task satisfactorily.
Extrinsic motivation on the other hand comes outside the individual from gaining a reward for completing the action.
Accoring to Amarasinghe a persons personality plays a major role whether he or she is more intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.
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| Figure 1: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivators |
Dawn Foster writes in here post “What Motivates Participants to Engage in Online Communities” that people are not motivated by just one factor. People are motivated in many different ways with complex interactions between motivations.
But usually a first time user comes into a community because of one of these motivations shown in Figure 2. And getting people motivated to visit the community for the first time is half of the battle. After the first time participating it is important to motivate people continuing participating. According to Foster this can be done by
- making it more fun and/or more social
- help people to develop their skills and to learn something new
- recognize the status of top contributors
- tap into their passion for a topic
Figure 2: Motivation Facotrs
I think this post is very interesting, as we think about the motivations of people to participate in social media we should also think about the motivations of social media to create a community.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the motivations of starting a new community drives in a big way why people join and will determine the success or failure.
Think about Open Source communities, they are created as a need for different software and so people are willing to contribute with knowledge because they will also get benefits from better software and more apps. As you mention they have passion for the topic and they have the need to get recognition.