Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and group behavior in online communities and social networks.
Mi...
Updated 6 months ago
Version 7.0
Blog Post
Hello Gianluca,
Thank you for the comment.
You are right that in some case the trigger can be build into and be part of the mechanism of motivation. But they don't always have to be that way. One of these cases is when the mechanism for motivation serves to drive one action, where the trigger can call for a different action.
For example, Bob may be a lurker on this Lithosphere community, and he reading the content of this community, but never do anything else. As he continue to lurk, he's re-visits are tracked, and points are rewarded for his re-visits. And Bob's sees his re-visit points, which encourages hime to revisit. Then when Bob's re-visit point reach a certain level, which the system determined he is a engaged lurker, a trigger can be apply to prompt him to take some new action (e.g. give a kudos). Maybe he will receive a message saying that "You have earn XXX points for your frequent visit. Did you know that you can earn participation point by giving kudos to contents you like?" This trigger will prompt him to take a different action, which he normally doesn't take.
Another case where the trigger don't have to be part of the motivation mechanism is when the user don't know that they can take a certain action. They may be motivated and have the ability, but they may not be aware of all the features or action that they can take. In that case, a trigger can show them how to carry out that action explicitly. There are many other examples.
OK, I hope this make sense. You are absolutely correct on that I will dive deeper into each factor of the FBM in future post. So, stay tuned for deeper discussions about the 3 factors.
Thanks again for the comment. I'm sure many reader are probably thinking abou the samething too. Hope to see you again on Lithosphere.