Core Concepts
Founders' motivations, goals, and planned actions for their new online communities significantly influence the early trajectories and success of those communities.
Abstract
This study explores the motivations, goals, and community-building plans of founders of new online communities on Reddit. The key findings are:
Founders' top motivation is topical interest, followed by exchanging information and connecting with others. Self-promotion is the least common motivation.
Founders have heterogeneous goals for their communities, but tend to prioritize quality-oriented measures like high member interaction over quantity-oriented measures like large user numbers.
Differences in founders' motivations predict differences in their goals and planned actions to build their communities, such as raising awareness, welcoming newcomers, encouraging contributions, and regulating behavior.
Founders' motivations, goals, and planned actions also predict differences in the early trajectories of their communities in terms of attracting visitors, contributors, and subscribers over the first 28 days.
The authors discuss implications for researchers, designers, and founders of online communities, such as customizing platform features and analytics to better support founders based on their motivations and goals.
Stats
"I started this subreddit because the topic is entertaining."
"I started this subreddit to collect/provide information that might be useful."
"I started this subreddit to meet interesting people."
"I started this subreddit because it helps me gain support or respect."
Quotes
"Founders motivated by 'topical interest' create communities that attract more early visitors, contributors, and subscribers."
"Founders motivated to 'exchange information' were more likely to prioritize community quality, while those motivated by 'self-promotion' were more likely to prioritize quantity."
"Having plans to 'raise awareness' was the largest determinant of a community's ability to attract early visitors, contributors, and subscribers."