Motivations and Usage Patterns on Social Network Sites

Social network sites count millions of members these days. For a growing number of Internet users, maintaining a profile on a social network site is part of their everyday life today. The debate of the social use of the Internet has focused on the one hand, on whether persons establish new relationships online and, on the other hand, on how persons use the Internet to maintain relationships. Social network sites explicitly aim at supporting people in both aspects. The number of members shows their success, but do social network sites really afford the maintenance of existing and establishment of new contacts? As yet, there has been no systematic investigation of the motivations and usage patterns on social network sites. This study lays the groundwork describing the social networks displayed as well as the perceptions members have of the displayed connections between others. Furthermore, the frequency, motivations and outcome of the creation of links to yet unknown persons are investigated. Participants of a German SNS were surveyed with an online questionnaire. The results show rather small networks which consist of both work and private contacts suggesting a substantial overlap with the offline networks. Regarding new links, over half of the users have added an as yet unknown person to their contact list, but many of new relationships do not develop further.