Individual Use of Mobile Apps for Social Networking

Organizations are increasingly exploring the business opportunities brought about by social media applications. The ubiquitous access to these applications or their mobile versions (i.e., mobile apps) through smart phones makes them powerful. Understanding how individuals use social media applications to interact and to share information for decision making will help organizations better leverage the power of social media technology for their businesses. A research model is proposed by integrating the end-user computing theory and the psychological empowerment theory to explore the impact of effective use of mobile apps and the psychological empowerment on task innovation and continued use of mobile apps. The model was empirically tested with 390 responses using mobile apps for social networking or communication. Preliminary results suggest that the use of mobile apps and users’ psychological empowerment derived from using mobile apps lead to users’ task innovation and sustained efforts of using mobile apps.