QotW4: My little Community

I was lucky enough to own a community on the Internet. My little website has about8675 members within a month(and counting at the rate of 184 new members per day). On the Alexa ranking website, I am standing at 99,232th in the whole Internet world. Here is the report

My website was also featured in one of the biggest Vietnamese news website on Tuesday (24h.com.vn, 2007)

http://www15.24h.com.vn/news.php/55/138546

The success of my website has come from a very simple reason:"The Gift Economy". How could I consider my website as a "Gift Economy"? There are few reasons.

I. The Definition
Rheingold (1993) has described interaction in one online community (the WELL) as consisting of a gift economy, in which help and information is offered without the expectation of any direct, immediate quid-pro-quo. According to Rheingold's definition, every online community on the Internet is a gift economy. Without being an exception, my gift economy has the market of nearly 10,000 customers . They exchange their own Yahoo blog customized themes. And the most important thing is that all "products" are free.

II. The way it works:
Even though all "products" are free, there is still an unspoken rule : you have to give while you take. Kollock mentioned this rule as a obligation in his book "The Economies of Online Cooperation". Members in the community are encouraged to design themes or give comments on others' themes. The more themes a designer share, the more popular he/she is. And the feeling of being recognized has motivated members to contribute volunteerly. Each theme is the gift from a member to the rest of the community. And the only essential is this: the gift must always move (Lewis Hyde, 1983). From one theme, the design is spreaded around endlessly. Someone may use it or be inspired by the gift, who later create a new theme from the existing theme. This flow of ideas is the power behind my Gift Economy .

As the community grows stronger and stronger, the economy becomes more complex. There are competitions among designers. There are copyright infringements. All the characteristics of a real economy has been shaped in my small online community.

Reference:
Lewis, Hyde (1983). "The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property". 1983

Kollock, Peter (1999). 'The Economies of Online Cooperation; Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace" Retrieved February 8, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm

Rheingold, Howard. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Addison-Wesley.Wikipedia (2007). Gift economy. Retrieved February 8, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy