The Connector Website Model New Implications for Social ... - PRWeb

website indicating what seems to be very serious decline. Tagged and Orkut
demonstrated high growth spurts in this period, but the wild rhythms of their trends likely
hurt its correlation to their respective exponential models. As a result, these two
connectors fall within the “moderate” category. The other websites did not show a
dramatic percentage growth nor did they fit well with their exponential models. Eight
connector websites do not pass this empirical test.
Trend volatility might explain in part why Tagged and Orkut missed the cut, and
why Facebook (showing less impressive growth) did fit its exponential model. Table 6
lists the connector websites in ascending order, from least to most volatile. 51 We see
Tagged and Orkut are at the bottom of the list, having the steepest upturns and downturns
on their respective month-to-month rates of change. (see Appendix G) The bottom line
is that the end point for this particular analysis, June 2006, may have been chance that
Tagged and Orkut were at favorable levels when compared to May 2005.
Website Age and Seasonal Trends
Two general website characteristics may partly explain the observed trends. First,
the age of the connector website, or online community, seems to relate to traffic growth
differences. There is a moderate negative association (r=-.45) between a website’s age
(in months) and its percentage growth over the time period – meaning that older age may
bring slower growth. 52 This is not a big surprise. It is quite possible the older websites
boomed at an earlier time before the observed time period. A maturation period may be
a characteristic for these websites as they approach long term sustainability. It is also
interesting to note that there is a moderate negative association (r=-.40) between a
website’s age and its volatility across the time period – meaning that older sites may
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