How important is the “social” in social networking? A perceived value empirical investigation

The purpose of this paper is to report on a value-based empirical investigation of the adoption of Twitter social networking application. The unprecedented popularity of social networking applications in a short time period warrants exploring theory-based reasons of their success.

A cross-sectional survey-based study to elicit user views on Twitter was conducted with participants recruited through the web site of a North-American university.

All facets of perceived value considered in the study (utilitarian, hedonic and social) had a significant and relatively strong influence on consumer intent to use Twitter. Quite surprisingly for a social networking application, though, the social value facet had comparatively the weakest contribution in the use equation.

User value perception might have been influenced by the features of the actual social networking application under scrutiny (i.e. Twitter in this case).

To maximize the chances of success of new social networking applications, developers and marketers of these media should focus on the hedonic and utilitarian sides of their perceived value.

Additional efforts are necessary to better understand the reasons and factors leading to a comparatively lower social value perception of a social networking application, compared to its hedonic and utilitarian values.

Overall, the study opens the door for investigating user perceptions on popular social networking applications in an effort to understand the unparalleled success of these services in a short time period.