Traditional communications media has been transformed and reshaped with the introduction of the Internet and its technologies. The Internet has massively evolved over time, and the World Wide Web or otherwise referred to as Web 1.0 has developed to what is so called Web 2.0. The explosive diffusion of this global system has fostered the emergence of Web-based communities supported by the existence of globally connected individuals. As both the number of World Wide Web virtual community sites and users has expanded and grown quickly, these communities have become a subject of study to researchers of multiple disciplines. However, sustaining a successful operation of any Web 2.0 community depends on the continuous participation of its own users. It is massively important to maintain committed members in terms of continuous participation. Yet, their level of participation might vary depending on one‘s personal, social, situational, and cultural influences that eventually affect their intentions and behaviour on whether to continue or discontinue participating in that community. Facebook as a particular Web 2.0 community has been used as an exemplary case study in this research reflecting the drivers of its continuous usage in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Moreover, very few studies on Web 2.0 communities covered the Middle East area and more specifically there is almost absence of research in Jordan on how users of Facebook along with their cultural and behavioural influences would continue using this Web 2.0 community or not. Therefore, this study tackles this issue to investigate the influences affecting the continuous participation in these communities This research develops a conceptual framework that can be used as an instrument to guide empirical work in the field of Web 2.0 communities. The empirical context of the research is random Facebook users in Jordan, where data were analysed using quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Results and findings show that Personal attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control has shown to be all significant and highly influential on affecting users‘ intentions to continue participating on Facebook, perceived behavioural control (i.e. facilitating conditions, controllability) ranked the highest in its significance towards examining users’ intentions to continue participating on Facebook. Followed by the subjective norms (i.e. critical mass, compliance, and informational influences), then ranked the personal attitude (i.e. satisfaction, compatibility). Results have proved that most Facebook users in Jordan do participate on this site in the first place to deliver epistemic value elements, not with a much difference came the social value after, then ranked the hedonic third. The utilitarian value proved to be insignificant by all means, therefore, users intend to continue participating on Facebook despite of the perceived value elements to be delivered. Interestingly, analysis have proved the insignificance of the three cultural dimensions (i.e. masculinity vs. Femininity, individualism vs. Collectivism, and long-term vs. Short-term orientation), therefore, it has not been considered moderating in the framework of this research. Furthermore, the study concludes with specific implications for relevant theories, and useful findings on the individual, organizational, and the societal levels. Additionally, researchers in similar areas can find this work useful as a way to approach new streams in studying participation in Web 2.0 communities.

L’évolution du Web et de ses applications subit depuis quelques années une mutation vers les technologies qui incluent la dimension sociale comme entité de première classe. Nous témoignons dans le passage du Web 1.0 au Web 2.0 puis au Web 3.0, 4.0 etc.. que les utilisateurs et les réseaux sociaux qui se forment sont au centre de cette évolution. Le web exhibe aussi toutes les caractéristiques d’un système complexe. Ces propriétés systèmes complexes et cette dimension sociale doivent être prises en considération lors de la conception et le développement des applications web. Considérons le cas des systèmes de tagging ou d’étiquetage collaboratifs. Ces systèmes sont un exemple de systèmes complexes, auto-organisés et socialement conscients. Le paradigme des systèmes multi-agents coordonné par les mécanismes d’auto-organisations a été utilisé d’une façon effective pour la conception et modélisation des systèmes complexes. Les systèmes de tagging collaboratifs actuels ne prennent pas l’avantage complet de leurs caractéristiques systèmes complexes, surtout dans l’adaptation à leur environnement et l’émergence de nouvelles fonctionnalités. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous proposons un modèle pour la conception et développement d’un nouveau système d’étiquetage collaboratif MySURF (My Similar Users, Resources, Folksonomies), utilisant une approche multi-agents gouvernée par la coévolution des organisations sociales et spatiales des agents. Nous montrons comment ce système proposé offre plusieurs nouvelles fonctionnalités qui peuvent améliorer les systèmes d’étiquetage collaboratifs actuels. / The evolution of the Web and its applications has undergone in the last few years a mutation towards technologies that include the social dimension as a first class entity. We are witnessing in the evolution of the web from the web 1.0 to web 2.0 to web 3.0 and eventually web 4.0 that the users, their interactions and the emerging social networks are in the center of this evolution. The web also exhibits all the characteristics of a complex system. These complex systems properties and this social dimension must be taken into consideration in the design and the development of new web applications. Let us consider the case of collaborative tagging systems. These systems are an example of complex, self-organized and socially aware systems. The multi-agent systems paradigm coordinated by self-organizations mechanisms was used in an effective way for the design and modeling of the complex systems. Current collaborative tagging systems do not take full advantage of the characteristics of complex systems, especially in adapting to their environment and the emergence of new features. In this thesis, we propose a model for the design and development of a new collaborative tagging system MySURF (My Similar Users, Resources, Folksonomies), using a multi-agent system approach governed by the coevolution of the social and spatial organization of the agents. We show how the proposed system offers several new features that can improve current collaborative tagging systems.

Web 2.0 has significantly transformed the way how modern society works now-a-days. In today‘s Web, information not only flows top down from the web sites to the readers; but also flows bottom up contributed by mass user. Hugely popular Web 2.0 applications like Wikis, social applications (e.g. Facebook, MySpace), media sharing applications (e.g. YouTube, Flickr), blogging and numerous others generate lots of user generated contents and make heavy use of the underlying storage. Data storage system is the heart of these applications as all user activities are translated to read and write requests and directed to the database for further action. Hence focus is on the storage that serves data to support the applications and its reliable and efficient design is instrumental for applications to perform in line with expectations. Large scale storage systems are being used by popular social networking services like Facebook, MySpace where millions of users‘ data have been stored and fully accessed by these companies. However from users‘ point of view there has been justified concern about user data ownership and lack of control over personal data. For example, on more than one occasions Facebook have exercised its control over users‘ data without respecting users‘ rights to ownership of their own content and manipulated data for its own business interest without users‘ knowledge or consent. The thesis proposes, designs and implements a large scale, robust and fault-tolerant key-value data storage prototype that is peer-to-peer based and intends to back away from the client-server paradigm with a view to relieving the companies from data storage and management responsibilities and letting users control their own personal data. Several read and write APIs (similar to Yahoo!‘s P NUTS but different in terms of underlying design and the environment they are targeted for) with various data consistency guarantees are provided from which a wide range of web applications would be able to choose the APIs according to their data consistency, performance and availability requirements. An analytical comparison is also made against the PNUTS system that targets a more stable environment. For evaluation, simulation has been carried out to test the system availability, scalability and fault-tolerance in a dynamic environment. The results are then analyzed and conclusion is drawn that the system is scalable, available and shows acceptable performance.