Future research
Interesting follow-up research would be a more comprehensive study of the ways in which successful hypertext applications have so far overcome critical mass. A more rigorous approach, which would likely enable us to identify the relative importance of the various factors, would be to match the ...read on
Conclusion
To conclude, we have shown that while a plethora of terms are used to describe critical mass and network effects, for hypertext applications the problem can be clearly phrased in terms of a missing hero-/collective-type social fence: users are needed to make it useful, but there will be no users ...read on
Rewards
The final factor that is of influence on critical mass in collaborative web-applications, is that of rewards. Publishing in academic journals is tightly integrated with career advancement, and thus brings great rewards to authors. Compared to this, web-communities can offer much less. Though it is ...read on
Credibility
An application can also be helped a lot by it having credibility. Credibility can come from a project being affiliated with, or subsidised by a reputable institution, as well as from personal recommendations by so called stars (highly respected persons in the relevant community). Credibility is ...read on
Sociability
Sociability is a term akin to usability, which was proposed by Jenny Preece. Instead of being about interacting with the software, it is about interacting with others, across the software. It mostly refers to the degree to which the community is supported and safe-guarded by the application and its ...read on
Interactivity
Related to an applications speed, but different from it, is its interactivity. E.g. how much feedback do users get and how much do they feel in control? Wikipedias instant-publication is a positive point in this respect. But Google Wave takes interactivity to a whole new level by making the editing-...read on
Usability
An applications ability to overcome critical mass is closely related to its usability. First of all, because bad usability brings a learning-curve that can incur extra cognitive cost, but more so because it can cause frustration. A lot of research has been done into usability, and things such as ...read on
Content
In terms of content it is important, first of all, that there is enough seed-content on the site, and that it is of sufficient quality. A more surprising thing is that the content ideally should also be controversial, or at least something that elicits peoples responses. It was found by Gaowei Chen ...read on
Audience
The first important factor that determines whether a hypertext application can attain critical mass, is the audience it targets. A web-savvy audience is more likely to adopt a hypertext application, than an audience of people that distrust the web on principle. Dorine Andrews, for example, found ...read on
