Mobilizing lurkers with a targeted task

Users of online communities are commonly classified into active members versus lurkers. In this work we experiment with a method designed to encourage lurkers to share their acquired social capital with a community through lightweight contribution. The findings from our experiment demonstrate the importance of exploring new ways lurker populations can offer additional benefits to online communities. Copyright © 2010, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.