Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 33, April 2014, Pages 163-170
Computers in Human Behavior

Research Report
Beyond Facebook: The generalization of social networking site measures

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.01.023Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Participants performed five tasks on a new social network site.

  • We measured their Social Network Site Diet, then their frustration and satisfaction.

  • Social Network Site Diet differentiated participants into two groups.

  • High Social Network Site Diet participants were satisfied with a frustrating tool.

  • High Social Network Site Diet participants valued usefulness over ease of use.

Abstract

Purpose

Previous research on social networking sites (SNSs) suggests several factors that contribute to SNS use. However, the factors were specific to a particular website. We wished to know if similar factors could predict the use of a new SNS in terms of usefulness and satisfaction with the goal of creating factors that would generalize across SNSs.

Results

Participants reported their SNS Diet and performed five tasks using a new SNS. Then, participants reported which of the five tasks was most frustrating. Participants also reported if the usefulness of the SNS would affect their future use of the site. Participants with a high SNS Diet used SNSs once a day or more. The SNS Diet was predictive of a participant’s satisfaction rating and a participant’s perception of usefulness.

Conclusion

The differences suggest that different groups of social networking users will respond differently based on their SNS Diet. This study finds support for both the Rational Actor Perspective and the Web Acceptance Model. We outline a new continuous measure of SNS use which generalizes across different social networks.

Introduction

Unlike email or instant messaging communication tools, social network site (SNS)1 applications must attract a critical number of users for the benefit of SNS use to emerge (Lin and Bhattacherjee, 2008, Lin and Lu, 2011). Traditionally, communication has been viewed as an interactive and collaborative process in which the two parties work together to establish a message and reach a mutual understanding of the knowledge contained within (Fussell, 1995). Among communication channels, SNS is unique in that it is asynchronous and uses only “intentional attempts to communicate a particular message to another person using conventional words or symbols” (Fussell, 1995, p. 230).

While much is known about users of social networking sites (SNSs), such as who they are, what they share, and why they share it (Lin & Lu, 2011). The factors which differentiate users of the SNSs, especially novel SNSs, require additional study. Previous SNS studies have quantified influencing factors by measuring the time on site (with a self-report), number of friends, and the Facebook intensity scale (Ellison et al., 2007, Johnson, 2008, Smock et al., 2011, Tong et al., 2008). While these factors are sufficient to study existing SNSs, they do not generalize to new SNS applications. Developers, practitioners and researchers have few tools to explore how and why SNS users accept or fail to accept a new SNS. This study explores factors that can generalize to all SNSs and measure a new SNS. These factors have been suggested by emerging frameworks of SNS use such as the Rational Actor Perspective and the Web Acceptance Model.

Rational Actor Perspective was developed in studies of email communication by Markus (1994)and has since been extended into other means of asynchronous electronic communication (Bowman, Westerman, & Claus, 2012). The Rational Actor Perspective (RAP) framework suggests that an “SNS Diet” can predict a user’s ability to overcome poor tool design in order to fulfill a SNS goal (Bowman et al., 2012). As the combination of frequent SNS use, duration of use, and amount of use increases (i.e., daily, weekly, or monthly), the user is more likely to overcome inadequate designs.

The Web Acceptance Model is an expansion of the Technology Acceptance Model (Ma & Liu, 2004; Koufaris, 2002). The Web Acceptance Model (WAM) framework suggests that perceived ease of use is a primary factor in a user’s decision to return to a website or an SNS. Ease of use is less relevant to experienced users who gauge usefulness as more important (Castañeda, Muñoz-Leiva, & Luque, 2007). In the Web Acceptance Model, SNSs that seem “easy to use” are preferred by novice users. As a user’s experience increases, the SNS’s usefulness replaces the perceived “ease of use” preference.

According to these two models, a user of an SNS may answer differently to questions about satisfaction, ease, and usefulness of the SNS site. Users with much experience are hypothesized to answer differently than users with significantly less experience (Bowman et al., 2012) and the more experienced users will be more tolerant of frustrating tools within the SNS (Bowman et al., 2012). The more experienced users will value usefulness (Castañeda et al., 2007).

We tested a three part hypothesis. Part I-SNS Diet: Users will respond differently to satisfaction, ease, and usefulness according to their experience which can be quantified by the factors of frequent SNS use, duration of use, and amount of use increases. Part II-Tolerance: Users with a high SNS Diet will be more tolerant of frustrating tools than users with a low SNS Diet. Part III-usefulness: Users with a high SNS Diet will value usefulness (i. e. not likely to use the site without their friends on the same SNS) more than users with a low SNS Diet (WAM).

Thus we collected measures:

  • 1.

    SNS Diet – frequency of SNS use (i.e. hourly, every few hours, daily, etc.), duration of use (age of first internet use), and amount of use (number of applications that you have installed).

  • 2.

    Ease of Use – the satisfaction ratings of the ease with which they could do the tasks/use the tools in the SNS.

  • 3.

    Usefulness – answering a question about if you would use it with friends, use it without your friends also being on the SNS site.

We used a novel SNS developed by a local company. At the time of testing, the novel SNS had 1160 users and had been available online and as a mobile application for less than a year. In addition to testing these hypotheses, we conducted a usability test. We shared the results of the testing with the company. There was no conflict of interest. The site has been sold to a private entity but remains active on the web. We are glad to respond to individual requests from the research community regarding the uniform resource locator of the site for use in further academic research.

The new SNS focused on simple photo, video, and text sharing. Users can sign-up for the free SNS service and create a profile (e.g., username, avatar, and photo) as well as find any friends already using the application. Users can share events (e.g., birthday party, vacation, party, and wedding) or experiences (e.g., weight loss journey, arts and crafts, cooking) with an audience. Users may share individual events as public or with only a few individuals or with no one. This SNS does not allow a user to set global privacy settings; the default is no sharing of events unless the user specifies who and how each individual event that she/he enters into the system should be shared.

Section snippets

Experimental design

The mobile and the desktop versions of the interfaces were tested. The desktop version of the SNS was tested on a desktop computer that was connected to the local area network. The mobile version of the interface was tested on an iPod 5th generation mobile iOS device with a wireless connection to the wide area network. The presentation order of the interfaces was counterbalanced between participants in case one interface would influence the other.

The design was a one-way within design.

Participants

Participants in this study had an average age of 21 years (M = 20.56 years, SD = 3.75 years). All of the participants reported that they had used at least one social networking site (SNS). Most of the participants (91%) currently used SNSs. Of the few participants (9%) who did not currently use SNSs, they stated that they had concerns about privacy or time management.

Hypothesis I – SNS Diet

The factors of: (a) how many applications they currently have on their devices (apps); (b) the frequency with which they use the most

Evidence in support of the RAP and the WAM

We did find that the DAU users had a different pattern of SNS use when compared to the WAU participants. The pattern suggested that DAU participants were more tolerant of frustrating tool design and valued the usefulness of the application in terms of using it with their friends. Further work needs to be done in this area with larger sample sizes and across several different SNSs.

Conclusions

The scale proposed here quantified the SNS Diet as the duration of use (years on the internet), the number of SNS

References (12)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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