In addition to fostering chatter, the Net is drawing people to groups they had not previously encountered. In part of our survey we asked respondents about the online group they most frequently contacted via the Internet. We enquired whether they belonged to this group before they started using the Internet. More than half of Cyber Groupies (56%) joined the group after having begun communicating with it over the Internet. For Local Groupies, 20% joined the group after they begun communicating with it on the Internet. We call the people who have joined a group after being in contact via the Internet “Net Joiners.” The people who already belong to a group and who then begin to use the Internet to stay in touch with group activities are “Long-timers.”
Net Joiners generally have less Internet experience than Long-timers. Net Joiners are also more demographically diverse than Long-time group members. Notably, the joiners as a group are younger than the overall Internet population. Although Net Joiners tend to report lower levels of frequent participation in online groups than Long-timers do, there does not appear to be pervasive lurking among either Net Joiners or Long-timers. Many people, when thinking about the group with which they are most involved, report they are active participants in online discussions.
Joiners of online groups, whether they are cyber groups or local groups, have different membership patterns. Net Joiners are drawn principally to hobbyist groups, whereas Long-timers are most involved with trade or professional associations. For Local Groupies, the differences are more striking. While most Long-time members of local groups are most engaged with religious groups, Net Joiners are evenly split among religious groups and local youth groups. Moreover, they are interested in charitable groups, neighborhood associations, and local sports leagues.
On average, Cyber Groupies are most likely to say that a trade or professional group is the online group with which they most closely stay in touch (21% say this), followed closely by hobby groups (17%). In contrast, Net Joiners of online groups are most involved with a group having to do with a hobby.
Net Joiners are less involved with their online group than Long-time members, if involvement is measured by email traffic with the group, new acquaintances made, and perceptions about overall engagement with the group. About half of all Net Joiners (49%) say they use email to communicate with an online group, well below the three-quarters (78%) of Long-timers who use the Internet to keep in touch with it. However, when measured by frequency of email contact, Net Joiners are about as likely as the Long-time members to send or receive an email from the group at least several times a week (41% for Net Joiners to 45% for Long-timers).
Those who join online groups seem a bit more interested in using the Internet to monitor group news than their more veteran counterparts. Fully 79% of Net Joiners use the Internet to get general membership information and news about the group compared with 74% of Long-timers. Although about the same share of Net Joiners and veteran members use email to discuss issues with group members (67% of Net Joiners and 70% of veteran members), pre-Internet members are more likely to use email to create or maintain personal relationships with group members than Net Joiners (by a 53% to 44% margin).
Demographically, Net Joiners of cyber groups are more likely than Long-timers to be female, young, non-white, come from households with modest incomes, and relatively new to the Internet. Net Joiners are far less likely to have a college education than Long-timers and twice as likely to be in a household making less than $30,000 per year. Net Joiners are also about twice as likely as Long-Timers to be Hispanic or African-American. Another notable difference comes in Internet experience. These figures suggest that not only are cyber groups a magnet for Internet users, they are especially attractive to novice Internet users.