What happens offline stays offline? Examining sustainability of a hybrid social system

The emergence of social Web has gone beyond connecting people and documents online to further connecting people, places, and artifacts both online and offline. A variety of online platforms with the specific goal of supporting offline connections have been attracting the attention of practitioners and users of social Web systems. Such hybrid platforms have been shown to contribute to online and offline prosperity of connections and engagements of people. In this work, we present a study of hybrid social Web systems in terms of factors contributing to their sustainability. Our results suggests that emphasis on online interactions and online representation of offline activities can lead to higher level of sustainability. Based on our results, we provide a set of design guidelines to address the challenges of sustaining user activities in hybrid social Web systems