User participation is a crucial problem for peer-to-peer systems. In a p2p system, there are no powerful servers which provide various services or information for the clients, All the users of the system are equal peers, which act as both servers and clients. What a user can get from the system completely depends on what other users contribute to the system. If few users are willing to participate in the community or make contributions to it, the peer-to-peer system will never become a successful one no matter what excellent technology it applies.

Our experience with Comtella system (a peer-to-peer application which enables a community of faculties and students to share and exchange resources, such as research papers) showed that the size of the community of users may directly determine the level of usefulness of a p2p system and the usefulness of the system can influence the number of users in reverse. In order to have this ˇ°feedback loopˇ± work on a peer-to-peer system in a positive way, motivations are needed to attract users.

To see how the Comtella works, please click here. It is last version of Comtella, using for CMPT490 in spring 2003.

Publications:

Ran Cheng, Julita Vassileva. User Motivation and Persuasion Strategy for Peer-to-peer Communities, Proceedings HICSS'2005 (Mini-track on "Online Communities in the Digital Economy"), Hawaii, Jan 3-6, 2005.

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