Mutual development in mass collaboration: Identifying interaction patterns in customer-initiated software product development

In this paper we investigate computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and innovation in a large-scale distributed setting. Get Satisfaction (GS), a social media platform for involving customers in product development activities, is our case study. In order to identify how end users contribute to product development, we researched the interactions between end users, champions, and professional developers in this online community as they jointly constructed a shared artifact (a web application). We collected publicly available platform interaction data over a six-month period (N = 229 users). The methods we employed are social network analysis (SNA) and interaction analysis (IA), which we combined in a mixed-methods design. At the network level, we identified key actors according to centrality measures. At the interaction level, we zoomed in on specific interactions. We propose a model of mass collaboration in terms of four interaction patterns: 1) gatekeeping, control of excessive information sharing, 2) bridge building, spreading information across groups in the network, 3) general development, allowing professional developers to create new software functionality and update existing software, and 4) user-user collaboration, facilitating non-centrally organized development activities, ranging from feature requests to local development. We discuss our findings and compare them with related research.