User involvement in the partner program of the educational social network
This work addresses user growth for an educational social network, but it appears incremental as it applies known viral mechanics to a specific system without introducing new methods.
The paper tackled the problem of growing an educational social network's user base by involving existing users in a partner program using viral mechanics, and found that specific interface implementations and user motivations led to both positive and negative outcomes in system growth as measured by the Viral K-factor.
The paper describes experiments to attract active online system users to the partner program. The objective is to grow the number of users by involving existing system users in viral mechanics. Several examples of user motivation are given, along with the specific interface implementations and viral mechanics. Viral K-factor was used as the metrics for the resulting system growth assessment. Specific examples show both positive and negative outcomes. Growth of the target system parameters is discussed.