Patterns of File-Sharing in an Enterprise: Authors, Contributors, Collectors, and Lurkers

Great work by Michael Muller of IBM

We describe Cattail, an experimental enterprise file-sharing service in IBM. Over the past several years, 17985 Cattail users have uploaded 132041 files, which have been used by 115538 users. In addition 15240 people have shared 75951 of the files with other users, and, 5444 people have created 12461 collections comprising 60476 of the files. We use this rich set of data to characterize file-sharing in the enterprise. This talk will describe Cattail, and the factors that lead to a file being of use to other people, analyzed in two timeframes: over the lifetime of a file, and within the microstructure of a user's session. We will also explore emergent roles within the file-sharing system, and we will conclude with a look at the work of lurkers in the enterprise.