Use of Social Software in E-Business: A Cross-Sectional, Cross-Country Study

Social Software (SoS) is a term commonly used to describe a group of web based services that have capability to connect, disseminate information, network or blog. The popular SoS has created environments to attract millions of users and a favorable environment for businesses to exploit the benefit of having access to the users by adopting it as a business support tool. Studies indicate that SoS is being used by businesses for engaging with the general public, enhancing customer interaction and crisis communication. This paper analyses the status quo of the SoS use of enterprises from six countries and various industries in the context of e-business. The reported findings show that the surveyed enterprises mostly use the established SoS like Facebook and Twitter to engage with the customer but that there are also significant differences in SoS usage by country, industry and enterprise ranking.