Towards a Research Agenda for Virtual Communities

The Internet has spurred a phenomenal growth of virtual communities (VC). VCs can range from simple information exchange based forums to more complex networks supporting new product development. For example, communities of interest based forums such as investment-related Virtual Communities bring together individuals interested in exchanging information about stocks while online production communities such as open source development communities focus on developing a new product. This Mini-track is designed to focus on issues relevant to the design, management and impact of VCs. It attracted several good submissions addressing many relevant issues for theory development and practice. In this paper, we summarize the accepted papers for the Virtual Communities track and outline areas for future research.