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

structure consisting of the website and its community, users have a higher incentive to
seek out User 4.8 rather than User 2.2 for online communications or transactions. 66 User
4.8’s social capital is actually visible and come across as more attractive to others.
There are qualitative means for gauging trust and reputation on connector
websites. Reviews (also called testimonials, bulletins, and recommendations) exist on
connector such as Judy’s Book, Friendster, MySpace, and Tribe.net. This user-generated
text is an explicit cue. More subtle signals are found on a given user’s profile page, such
as the appearance of the profile page; disclosed frequency of a user’s online activity;
quantity and quality of listed friends/contacts; response quality in the profile’s categories;
and user postings or comments to message boards. Such information can signal personal
characteristics in much the same way we get impressions from email. 67 It is reasonable
to think that a connector’s online community would like these various explicit and
implicit user cues to be as valid and reliable as possible. If this occurs, trust should
develop between users, and between the community and the website. If there is little
validity and reliability in these cues, user flight to a competing connector should likely
occur over time. Well-constructed accountability mechanisms probably temper trend
volatility and add to a site’s stickiness.
Although connectors have had a measurable impact in a variety of social areas
(commerce and trading; dating; teenage and collegiate socializing; career networking), in
the future the model will likely be used for more specific interests and topics in which
people are regularly engaged or for people in life transition phases. Themes could
organize around occupations, education, healthcare, parenting, religious or spiritual
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