Online community observation presentation

Staying Motivated

Online Community PresentationSpring 2014

Christina StrongJRN 821

What are things that you do to stay motivated?

Sparkpeople.com A free website for people to use to lose weight and make healthy lifestyle

changes

"This site really is free– with no strings attached. Over 13 million people around the world have signed up for SparkPeople.com to lose weight and make healthy lifestyle changes.

SparkPeople can be free because my wife and I were very early eBay employees and are now using our earnings from its success to make the world a healthier place. Join today to see what everyone is talking about!" — Chris "SparkGuy" Downie

Healthy Recipes

Exercise Ideas

Online Forums Meal and Exercise Diaries

Staying Motivated ForumThe forum is meant to help people stay motivated throughout their weight loss efforts. This can be

done through sharing of personal stories, people seeking advice or sharing of information.

Sentiment Analysis Across the Web Word Cloud from

Staying Motivated

Opinioncrawl.com

Functions of the forum• Post new threads• Reply to posts on the threads• Share the forum through an email message or by using a link • Subscribe to the forum • Search the message boards• Save a thread topic you like• View the Sparkpage of posters or send them a private message• When posting a new thread, you can:• Include a link, • Add an emoticon• Spell check• Choose if you want to receive an email notification each time

someone responds to your posting.

Community Attributes

• People feel welcome, there have never been any troll postings.

• There is no annoyance factor. There aren’t notification emails sent every time someone posts a new thread. Even the option of not receiving notification of new replies to your own thread post is convenient.

• Accountability

Community Attributes• Questions received more

replies then direct statements.

• Most posts topics were emotionally driven, how happy are you today? What emoticon are you today? Positive Affirmations, Etc.

• People that post more frequently get more replies. I contribute that to an awareness of that community member because of so many frequent postings.

E.g.,: Favorite motivational quotes or images” she has posted 1, 974 posts. She received 42 responses.

I received more replies with a question than direct statement

17 favorite quotes were listed

Behavior and Interactions, participants/identity,support behaviors

• Users share lots of personal stories, including successes and failures

• The screen names help infer as to who some of these people are or how they feel, e.g., Iamhappy, Thenavywife.

• Most people upload a profile picture on their profiles

• People respond more to threads of people that have posted more

• Feedback I’ve seen has all been positive or supportive

Spark Story

Routines • Posts usually occur at three times of the day, the

early mornings before work, midday after lunch hour and evenings after 5 p.m.

• Most posts are of the same theme: how do you feel today? What exercise do you plan to do today? What emoticon are you today? Today I am thankful for? What motivated you today? (these have all been posted several times on different days).

Data

• The average number of posts in the forum seems to be about 20 each day.

• There was one observed post by the second moderator Dragonchilde during the entire observation.

• Most of the forums based on screen names appear to be women.

Hierachy

Two Moderators

Reflections on the online community

•This forum is a feelings forum.

People want to talk about and

share how they are feeling.

Professional Use

These observations have thought me (in terms of PR or market research):1. To appeal to a weight loss market appeal to their emotions2. The way you talk to people in an online forum is important3. Getting leaders of an online community to spread your

message would be more effective4. Posting frequently so you’re seen a lot is important in

getting people to interact with you, let them know you’re there

5. Online communities need to be respectful and inclusive

Personal Use

1. It was beneficial being a person that wants to lose weight to participate.

2. I could use this forum outside of class and there is a chance I might because I think it was a useful tool for the people that did use it.

What’s your spark???

http://sparkpeople.comForum: http://bit.ly/1g2BFD2