Development of Online Communities - A Complexity Theory Perspective

Since the born of e-commerce at the end of last century, the development of new business based on Internet shows a characteristic of nonlinear and chaotic. This paper proposes an analysis model of online communities development based on a complexity theory, dissipative structure theory, which provides new perspective from which we can observe the development of new online business startups. We also give a positive analysis of development of online communities based on our model, and analyze the landmark events of the bifurcations and the characteristics of online communities at different stages. This model clearly reveals the evolution process of the online communities, and to some extent, foreshadows the future direction of the community.