Bloggers, Blotanists, and Superblotanists

The first day of spring was sunny, mild and gorgeous in Boston, where I was attending the annual meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society . It was the perfect day to be standing in front of an audience of sociologists talking about the virtual community of gardeners and garden bloggers known as Blotanical.

My paper explored how community is created at Blotanical, how this is helped along by the  structure of the website, and who becomes an active member. (Those who would like to see the whole paper in its full academic glory can click here.) In an earlier post (Blotanical: A Virtual Gardening Community), I discussed the creation of community at Blotanical; this post focuses on patterns of participation among new members.

Because most members come to Blotanical as a blog directory and only learn about the social networking aspects after they join, I was interested in learning which members would become active participants. I followed 116 new members who joined Blotanical between September 16 and October 22 2009, checking their participation levels one month and then again two months after they were added to the Blotanical rolls. I measured participation by using information readily available on members’ “plots”: how many times they had logged in, how many messages they had sent, how many posts they had picked, how many faves they had selected, and their total number of points.

Bloggers and Blotanists

The first thing I learned was that most garden bloggers who join Blotanical do not become active Blotanists. After one month, my 116 new Blotanical members divided roughly into thirds. One third had minimal activity after joining (at most logging in a few times). Another third had had more than minimal activity (mostly more logins), but couldn’t really be described as active. Only the final third got actively involved in Blotanical’s system of picks and faves and messages during their first month as members. I thought maybe some people just took more time to learn how to use Blotanical, but that wasn’t the case. Members generally participated less during the second month than they did during the first. More than half of my 116 new members had minimal Blotanical activity during their second month, and fewer than one in four were still active Blotanists at the end of two months.

Who is likely to become an active Blotanist? By gleaning some descriptive information from the plots and blogs of my group of new members, I discovered two characteristics that made a difference in who became an active Blotanist. The first was gender. It’s not just that most garden bloggers are women and that most Blotanical members are women; men who do join Blotanical are much less likely to become active participants than are women. Only one of every 5 men who joined during the period I studied ever became active Blotanists, but almost half the women who joined during this period did. But men who became active members were more likely to stay active, while women were more likely to reduce their participation during the second month of membership.

Becoming an active Blotanist was also influenced by a blogger’s professional relationship to horticulture. I divided members into four groups: those who were amateur gardeners, those with Master Gardener or equivalent certificates, those who worked in horticulture-related professions (for example, garden designers), and those who wrote a blog as part of the website of a horticulture-related business (for example, a nursery). Although most of my 116 new members were amateur gardeners, most of those amateurs never became active Blotanists. The group most likely to become active were the master gardeners; more than half of them were active participants throughout their first two months as Blotanical members. On the other end of the spectrum, those writing blogs for business websites were particularly unlikely to become active Blotanists.

The Superblotanists

As I did my research, I discovered one small group of new members (7 out of the 116) who became very active very quickly and kept up that high level of activity throughout the first two months of membership. I came to think of them as the “Superblotanists.” In order to be included in this group, members had to earn at least 500 points per month. But, in fact, most Superblotanists earned far more; they earned an average of more than 1300 points during the first month. And, unlike most other new members, the Superblotanists became even more active during their second month of membership, earning an average of over 2000 points. One Superblotanist earned more than 6000 points during the second month of membership!

Although their numbers are small, the Superblotanists are a very important presence at Blotanical. Because they spend so much time there, picking posts, exchanging messages with other members, welcoming newbies, leaving comments on others’ blogs, and just generally interacting with so many other members, the Superblotanists are critical to creating the strong sense of active community that so many Blotanical members value.

I’m not sure how long any one member can sustain this very high level of involvement with Blotanical. My guess is that people cycle in and out of this role as their available time and interest ebb and flow. It would be fun to go back and look at my group of 116 again now that they are no longer newbies. Are the Superblotanists still maintaining such a high level of activity? Have some who were only moderately active during their first two months become Superblotanists? Are there bloggers who were not active during their first two months who have now moved into the ranks of the Blotanists?

I am also interested in learning more about why members do or don’t become active members of the virtual community. What pushes them away from being active Blotanists? Or what pulls them in? I would be very interested in hearing from  Blotanical members who are not active Blotanists, those who are, and those whose participation levels have changed over time.