Why People Use Social Networking Sites

Authors:
Petter Bae Brandtzæg;Jan Heim
Affiliations:
SINTEF, OSLO, Norway 0314;SINTEF, OSLO, Norway 0314
Venue:
OCSC '09 Proceedings of the 3d International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing: Held as Part of HCI International 2009
Year:
2009

Citing 8
Cited 7

Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Socialbilty

Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Socialbilty
Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities

Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities
Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier

Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier
Public Displays of Connection

BT Technology Journal
Increasing participation in online communities: A framework for human-computer interaction

Computers in Human Behavior
Design for creating, uploading and sharing user generated content

CHI '08 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
User loyalty and online communities: why members of online communities are not faithful

Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on INtelligent TEchnologies for interactive enterTAINment
User acceptance of information technology: toward a unified view

MIS Quarterly

Cultural difference in motivations for using social network sites: A comparative study of American and Korean college students

Computers in Human Behavior
Sustainability as a value in technology design

First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Communication for Sustainable Communities
Softwares sociais: uma visão orientada a valores

Proceedings of the IX Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Understanding social networking sites adoption in China: A comparison of pre-adoption and post-adoption

Computers in Human Behavior
Social media and political participation: are facebook, twitter and YouTube democratizing our political systems?

ePart'11 Proceedings of the Third IFIP WG 8.5 international conference on Electronic participation
Connected scholars: Examining the role of social media in research practices of faculty using the UTAUT model

Computers in Human Behavior
De-virtualizing social events: understanding the gap between online and offline participation for event invitations

Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

One of the recent popular social media platforms is the social networking site (SNS). Thus far, few previous studies have empirically investigated people's motivations for SNS usage, especially not outside the U.S. This study combines a large-scale quantitative and qualitative research design, by asking 1,200 SNS users an open question regarding their reasons for using SNSs. An important conclusion drawn from a preliminary content analysis is that people often report many motivational reasons for using SNSs . The most important reason is to get in contact with new people (31%). The second most valued was to keep in touch with their friends (21%), whereas the third was general socializing (14%). A total of 11 different reasons and several sub-reasons were identified; that all give insight into the personal incentives that drive people to use SNSs and thus contribute to our understanding of how to develop successful social networking online.