The economics of social computing: Some preliminary findings on healthcare organizations

Large-scale organizations have used social computing platforms for various purposes. This research focuses on how hospitals utilize these platforms to attract potential customers (which represents the " extensivity" of a social computing platform) and generate interests in specific topics (which represents the " intensivity" of a platform). Specifically, we examine the effects of size of a hospital (or " size" ) and the time that the social computing platform has been in existence (or " time" ) on extensivity and intensivity. Our findings show that time is a significant variable on both dimensions; whereas size affects intensivity under certain conditions. We discuss the implications of these findings, and set the stage for future research.