In 2000 Amy Jo Kim proposed a membership life cycle for online communities. It states that members go through different stages of membership throughout their membership life cycle and must pass through ‘barriers’ before progressing (Kim 2000). The barriers tend to signify confidence increases in the user and generally result in increased participation. Kim’s theory was also mirrored by Lave and Wenger’s model (Lave et. al. 1991). They suggest five phases in the life cycle and introduced the term ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (LPP). LPP put states that “Through learning, newcomers become part of the community of practice” – (Lave et. al. 1991) and that “Learning is then the process of becoming a full participant in a sociocultural practice.” – (Lave et. al. 1991).

Lave and Wenger’s model suggests five types of trajectories amongst a learning community:

1. Peripheral – An outside, unstructured participation (Visitor)
2. Inbound – Newcomer is invested in the community and heading towards full participation
3. Insider – Full committed community participant
4. Boundary – A leader, sustains membership participation and brokers interactions
5. Outbound – Process of leaving the community due to new relationships, new positions, new outlooks

(Lave et. al. 1991)

Lave and Wenger’s Model Applied to YouTube
One of the most important factors surrounding online communities is participation and participation motivation: how do you get people involved? There are many theories based around online participation motivation, as many contributors face no monetary gain from their input. Altruistic motivations aside, Peter Kollock breaks them down into four categories.

1. Anticipated Reciprocity
2. Increased Recognition
3. Sense of efficacy
4. Sense of community

(Kollock 1998)

1. Anticipated Reciprocity - A member is compelled to contribute content or help others in the anticipation of one day needing help in return. This is an anticipated reciprocal relationship on the part of the contributor.

2. Increased Recognition - Reputation is the most recognized key factor in participation motivation. Users show a desire to gain notoriety and are generally willing to work for it. It can make Users key figures in communities and is often regardless of physical world situations or status.

3. Sense of efficacy - Users may contribute to a community because that contribution results in a sense of involvement and effect on the community. Normally driven by a Users belief in their ability to benefit the community either through expertise or group participation (Alexander et. al. 2004).

4. Sense of community - Many people are directly motivated by the desire to have people respond to their contributions. Social psychologists refer to this as a ‘sense of community’, Marc Smith refers to this as ‘communion’ (Smith 1991). Most online communities allow for this by enabling users to comment on contributed content. Using facebook as an example, Users are constantly confronted with requests to comment on other users actions. User actions can be rated, ‘liked’ or commented on. It is commonly acknowledged that there is some overlap between establishing a ‘sense of community’ and users increasing their reputation. It should also be acknowledged that there are degrees of overlap in all four of the key motivations (Smith 1992).

A virtual community is a group of people or social entity that have a primary means of communication other than face-to-face contact e.g. telephone, email, online social networks or instant messages. Generally these networks are used for a social, professional or educational means. They can be the sole source of communication between acquaintances or they can be a secondary supplementary source. It is common in today’s digital age for a user to have both a digital and physical relationship with.

Most online social networks make use of Web 2.0 technologies and ways of thinking. This has lead to many describing them as ‘Community 2.0′ (Ripanti 2008). However precursors to this modern phenomenon of online social medium were evident in the mid 90′s. Sites such as TheGlobe.com (1994), Geocities (1994) and Tripod (1995) attempted to bring users together through chat rooms and message boards. These were the harbingers of blogging and today’s social network platforms (Wikipedia 2009). In the early 2000′s modern social networks began to appear. Standard bearers such as flickr, mySpace and facebook had arrived. Similar trends are becoming apparent in the professional arena, as more and more companies begin to represent their staff and customers in a virtual community.

Online, and physical communities are dependent on similar kinds of social interaction and communication. Without these interactions, communities become dormant groups of people with no collective purpose or goals. Virtual communities can develop in much the same way as physical communities, in that they can develop cliques, fracturing to form new groups (Kim 2004). However one sees them, online social networks are now deeply embedded in everyday life. Be it social calendar, professional job hunting or online learning and tuition.