Personal Networks on Social Network Sites (SNS)

Social network sites (SNSs) count millions of members today. For a growing number of persons, maintaining a profile on a SNS is part of their everyday life. Research on Internet use in general and SNSs in particular has focused on the social aspects of maintaining relationships and establishing new relationships online. However, the relational data of SNSs may be also valuable in marketing to explore mechanisms of recommendations. Private recommendations proved to be very influential for customer decisions as captured in concepts such as word of mouth and viral marketing. Until now, the meaning of the data of SNSs is uncertain and has not been investigated. This work aims to answer three research issues. First, analyzing which factors influence the use of SNSs and thus, the resulting social network. Second, illuminating what information is really displayed in SNSs. And third, exploring the extent to which individual differences such as personality traits and motivations shape the personal networks displayed on SNSs. To this end, several field studies are reported as well as an online survey study of the participants of a German SNS.