A Case Study Of Peer Production Mode In Social Media Under The View Of Open Innovation

In recent days, online community has gradually developed as the main body of Internet activity. Web 2.0 facilitates the informative communication processes in online community more than ever before. Informative interaction between users help generate contents, which known as UGC (User Generated Content), consist an important part of the online community. When treated as the information product of website, UGC is considered significant in both recruiting new users and sustaining existed ones. Moreover, online community is becoming more and more socialized, extending its interactive activities to multiple platforms and channels. The structure of online communities, though resembles real communities, is more flexible and complex. Social media came into being within this context. How to organize effective peer production activities has become the prior concern of most social media operators. This research will take the view of open innovation and take a look into Guokr website from three respective, namely, user innovation motivation, online community stimulatory measures and production platform construction, and explore how successful social media use peer production to build and sustain online community as well as produce and diffuse innovative product.This research combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. Through semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and ethnography, this research found that in the case of Guokr, user type and professional level is associated with using motivation, to be more specific, the motivation to learn knowledge and help others. Guokr utilizes the power of lead user to guide and motive common users. Also, Guokr has developed a social structure which significantly encourages the peer production as well as control the whole production process in a convert way. However, future research is still needed when popularizing this result to non informative peer production platforms.