Social network sites have recently become extremely popular online destinations as they offer users easy ways to build and maintain their relationships with each other. Consequently, students, lecturers, teachers, parents and businesses are using these tools to communicate with each other in a fast and cost-effective manner. However, literature suggests that the full potential of social network sites has not yet been revealed since users are still battling to overcome the various negative characteristics surrounding these sites. A framework for appropriate use of these sites is needed so that users are able to overcome these negative aspects, allowing them to be more effective and use the sites successfully. The goal of this research is to construct a framework for perceived successful use of social computing tools in educational institutions. This framework will include critical success factors that need to be adopted by users in order to develop the positive aspects of social computing, while at the same time overcoming the disadvantages experienced by users. Factors for successful use were derived from the literature and consolidated into a theoretical framework in order to understand the factors that drive successful use of social network sites. Measures used to test successful use of social network sites were also derived from these sources and were included in the same theoretical framework; these measures allow users to evaluate the extent of perceived successful use of social network sites. This framework was tested empirically by means of a pilot study and online survey, and revised according to the results of the survey. The factors were identified using Cronbach alpha coefficients (in the pilot study) and exploratory factor analysis to confirm the reliability of the scales developed. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient analysis, t-tests and Pearson Chi-Square tests were used to measure the relationships amongst the variables in the framework proposed in this research. The factors influencing perceived successful use of social network sites were identified by the empirical study as: • Privacy and Security Settings need to be enabled. These are split into: - Settings: content that users allow others to see - Viewers: people who are allowed onto a user's profile • It is necessary for users to practise Legal and Acceptable Activities when using social network sites • Suspect Information needs to be checked before sharing it with others • Personal and Professional Time needs to be separated to ensure that work is completed before social activities occur • Users need to practise Professional and Ethical Behaviour • Users need to have a Positive Attitude when using social network sites • Usability of sites affects their success. This includes: - technical capacity (broadband) - ease of use - functionality (range of features and functions) • Current and Controversial Issues need to be discussed on social network sites. The extent to which social network sites are being used successfully can be evaluated by the presence of the following measures: • Range of Content must be available to users. This includes: - Content displayed on profiles - Viewers able to visit profiles • Visitors Behaviour is monitored and no unwanted visitors are present users' profiles • Social Contracts found on sites are followed by users • Critical Thinking Skills and Accurate Information are displayed by users • Work is completed before social activities occur on sites • A Variety of Users is present on sites • Collaboration between people as well as variety of opinions exist on sites • Social Capital (well-being) is present after users have been on sites • Learning and Advising Skills are enhanced on sites. The framework developed provides users with a useful instrument to overcome the negative characteristics associated with social network sites. If used successfully, social network sites can offer lecturers and students a unique method to develop their relationship, creating a positive learning experience.

Recent years witnessed incredibly increasing popularity of online social networking sites around the globe. The emergence of new social media, including online social networking sites, brings the communication world a brand-new area to explore. The success of Facebook and MySpace in the U.S. has attracted a considerate number of communication scholars to examine this phenomenon from different perspectives. As the most cutting-edge tool to investigate a newly-grown medium, uses and gratifications perspective focuses on why people use social media, and how people use them to satisfy their needs. In this study, the most popular online social networking site in China, Renren, was selected to investigate the uses and gratifications of Chinese college students. Four motivations, that is, socializing, entertainment, self-status seeking, and information seeking, were utilized to measure how much weight Chinese college students give to each motivation. Culture's impact on the usage of online social networking sites was also investigated. The concept of interdependent self-construal and independent self-construal was borrowed to examine how culture could play a role in SNS use among Chinese college students. The study found Chinese college students use SNS to gratify their needs of socializing, entertainment, information seeking, while self-status seeking seems to be a weaker factor of SNS use. Six themes emerged in the study including: 1) vision and outlook expansion, 2) friendship maintenance, 3) a sense of self-worth, 4) information seeking, 5) entertainment, and 6) cultivated as a habit, to pass time. In addition, Chinese college students seem to have independent self-construal rather than interdependent self-construal, but the tendency is weak and self-report statistics show they tend to give moderate answers regarding to the self-construal. The influence of different self-construals towards motives in using Renren is subtle. Further explanations of observed finding were provided in the thesis.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Technology Degree in Information Technology, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2014. / Social computing researchers are devoting efforts to understand the complex social behaviour of people using social networking platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, so as to inform the design of human-centered and socially aware systems. This research study investigates the factors of perceived trust, user satisfaction, social norm and perceived behavioural control, to develop a model for predicting the continuance intention of people to use online social networking for business transactions. In order to validate the predictive capability of the model developed, an online survey was used to collect 300 useable responses from people who have used LinkedIn and Twitter social networking platforms for business transactions at least once. The Partial Least Square (PLS) mathematical analysis tool was thereafter used to perform confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of measurement and structural models. The study results provide significant evidence in support of the factors of perceived trust, social norm and user satisfaction, as determinants of the continuance intention of people using online social networking platforms for business transactions. Perceived trust was found to exhibit a strong relationship with social norm and explains a variance of (R2=0.47). In addition, social norm explains a variance of (R2=0.44) and user satisfaction explains a variance of (R2=0.42), resulting in the model predicting (R2=0.56) continuance intention. In addition, the research model was tested for the moderating effects of usage habit, which were found to significantly moderate relationships between continuance intention and perceived trust, PBCand social norm, resulting in an improved predictive capability of (R2=0.89). The moderating result indicates that a higher level of habit increases the effect of perceived trust, Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC) and social norm on continuance intention. This result confirms the theoretical argument that the strength of user satisfaction to predict continuance, is strengthened by usage habit. The results of this research study generally have practical implications for individuals who desire to offer commercial services on online social networking technologies, to seriously consider building trust and maintaining user satisfaction to sustain their businesses. They should also think of strategies embedded in peer pressure, to attract, retain and establish trustworthy relationships with customers.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Technology Degree in Information Technology, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2014. / Social computing researchers are devoting efforts to understand the complex social behaviour of people using social networking platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, so as to inform the design of human-centered and socially aware systems. This research study investigates the factors of perceived trust, user satisfaction, social norm and perceived behavioural control, to develop a model for predicting the continuance intention of people to use online social networking for business transactions. In order to validate the predictive capability of the model developed, an online survey was used to collect 300 useable responses from people who have used LinkedIn and Twitter social networking platforms for business transactions at least once. The Partial Least Square (PLS) mathematical analysis tool was thereafter used to perform confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of measurement and structural models. The study results provide significant evidence in support of the factors of perceived trust, social norm and user satisfaction, as determinants of the continuance intention of people using online social networking platforms for business transactions. Perceived trust was found to exhibit a strong relationship with social norm and explains a variance of (R2=0.47). In addition, social norm explains a variance of (R2=0.44) and user satisfaction explains a variance of (R2=0.42), resulting in the model predicting (R2=0.56) continuance intention. In addition, the research model was tested for the moderating effects of usage habit, which were found to significantly moderate relationships between continuance intention and perceived trust, PBCand social norm, resulting in an improved predictive capability of (R2=0.89). The moderating result indicates that a higher level of habit increases the effect of perceived trust, Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC) and social norm on continuance intention. This result confirms the theoretical argument that the strength of user satisfaction to predict continuance, is strengthened by usage habit. The results of this research study generally have practical implications for individuals who desire to offer commercial services on online social networking technologies, to seriously consider building trust and maintaining user satisfaction to sustain their businesses. They should also think of strategies embedded in peer pressure, to attract, retain and establish trustworthy relationships with customers. / M

Social network sites (SNSs) have become very popular, with more than 1.39 billion people using Facebook alone. The ability to share large amounts of personal information with these services, such as location traces, photos, and messages, has raised a number of privacy concerns. The popularity of these services has enabled new research directions, allowing researchers to collect large amounts of data from SNSs to gain insight into how people share information, and to identify and resolve issues with such services. There are challenges to conducting such research responsibly, ensuring studies are ethical and protect the privacy of participants, while ensuring research outputs are sustainable and can be reproduced in the future. These challenges motivate the application of a theoretical framework that can be used to understand, identify, and mitigate the privacy impacts of emerging SNSs, and the conduct of ethical SNS studies. In this thesis, we apply Nissenbaum's model of contextual integrity to the study of SNSs. We develop an architecture for conducting privacy-preserving and reproducible SNS studies that upholds the contextual integrity of participants. We apply the architecture to the study of informed consent to show that contextual integrity can be leveraged to improve the acquisition of consent in such studies. We then use contextual integrity to diagnose potential privacy violations in an emerging form of SNS.

Huang, Hanyun. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-242). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; appendix in Chinese.

This thesis comprises four essays in the economics of networks and market design. The common thread in all these essays is the presence of complementarities or externalities. Chapter 2 presents a unified model of networks and matching markets. We build on a contribution by Pycia (2012). We show that strong pairwise alignment of agents’ preferences is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of strongly stable networks and strongly stable allocations in multilateral matching markets with finite contracts. Strongly stable networks are not necessarily efficient. Although we use a demanding stability concept, strong pairwise alignment allows for complementarities and externalities. In Chapter 3, we generalise the gross substitutes and complements condition introduced by Sun and Yang (2006). Our new condition guarantees the existence of competitive equilibrium in economies with indivisible goods. Competitive equilibrium can be found using an extension of the double-track adjustment process (Sun and Yang, 2009). In this chapter, we also study contract networks (Ostrovsky, 2008). We show that chain-stable contract allocations can exist even in cyclical contractual networks, such as electricity markets, as long as they are appropriately segmented. In Chapter 4, we run a series of experiments to compare the performance of four auctions – first-price, Vickrey, Vickrey-Nearest Rule (Day and Cramton, 2008), and Reference Rule (Erdil and Klemperer, 2010). In our setting, there are two items and three bidders. Two local bidders want an item each, but the global bidder wants both items. We introduce various exposure and package-bidding treatments. We find that the first-price auction always revenue-dominates all the other auctions without any loss in efficiency, strengthening the results of Marszalec (2011). Exposure affects global bidders only in the first-price auction. In other auctions, global bidders often do not take into account the effect of their own bids on their payments. We find no evidence of threshold effects. Finally, in Chapter 5, we develop a new model of online social network formation. In this model, agents belong to many overlapping social groups. We derive analytical solutions for the macroscopic properties of the network, such as the degree distribution. We study the dynamics of homophily – the tendency of individuals to associate with those similar to themselves. We calibrate our model to Facebook data from ten American colleges.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2011. / The purpose of this study is to identify the user features for an online sports community network. Social networks sites are on a rapid increase. Designers of these sites need to consider what features are critical to optimally facilitate their users’ behaviour on these sites. This identification of features will seek to enhance the growth and development of a site’s social communities and allow for its ultimate success. This study focuses on establishing the social networking ecosystem by identifying the role of social networks in society, the user behaviour trends on social network sites and the key features required for a social network site. Furthermore, the study establishes the role of sports fans in society and digital trends for online sports fans visiting sports sites. This study met the research objectives from the findings gained from relevant literature and the employment of an empirical research study. The latter was carried out by means of an online questionnaire targeting an audience that qualified to be both social media lovers and online sports fans. The research disclosed fundamental findings with regards to the user behaviour and frequency of usage of both social network sites and sports sites. Specifically, it was determined that the technological behaviours in the social technographic profile for online users were aligned to those of the social technographic profile for social media lovers and online sports fans. Consequently, the key features of social network sites and most frequently-used features on sports sites could be used to identify the features required for an online sports community network. The main conclusion drawn from this research was a list of features required for a sports community network. These features were determined for the initial launch phase of a sports community network. Enhancement and development of new features would be required to facilitate the user requirements as the site grows. It is therefore important for the success of the sports community site that the owners or designers continuously review the user requirements and adapt, enhance and develop features as the site gains traction. This research study recommends that the list provided be used for the initial design and launch phase of an online sports community network. This list should be constantly evaluated from a usercentric perspective as the site grows.

Social media is a marketing phenomenon that is taking the business world by storm. It goes beyond just being a marketing channel; because it is extremely disruptive by nature and has the potential to affect entire business models. Yet when it comes to social media execution, so many companies get it horribly wrong. Social media remains a part of marketing; it is not a replacement for it. However, it has the ability to redefine many aspects of marketing because it encourages conversation, community involvement and input from the public. Social media is changing the way companies communicate with their target markets. It is opening up new markets and providing channels for companies to not just talk to their customers but to provide new channels of sales to their target market based on trust built up in social media through openness and transparency. Marketing has moved from a push model to model dominated by social media, that of engagement. This study looked at literature that provided information, strategies and frameworks on how to create an effective social media strategy that is executable. The research shows that whilst much literature shares many aspects (the need to listen, engage, set goals, and formulate effective strategies); most of this literature is insufficient in actually providing a sound and effective platform that could be taken to create a strategy from its beginning to the point of execution. This research report creates a new detailed framework and plan that would allow a marketer to take the concept of social media and develop a working strategy and plan, as well as to execute it. It is aimed at marketers and people who have limited social media knowledge, and provides them with what they need to know in order to get started. The framework is a detailed plan that is based on an original social media marketing plan by Brian Solis.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: History and statistics confirm that social media and the internet has come a long way and is bound to keep evolving and growing in the future. But many opposing views and criticism surround the ubiquitous use thereof. One’s personal social media strategy is the basis of personal branding. Managing the strategy pro-actively and creatively is thus very important. The report gives a quick overview of the web key concepts, technologies and tools currently available for social media participation. These tools are grouped by looking at various current social media classification frameworks that exist. Alas, classification must also somehow make provision for forthcoming platforms – and is thus not conclusive. A discussion of the latest technological, digital and social media trends and adoption factors were also included. Knowledge of the trends influence the personal social media strategy formulation heavily. Intermediaries can also assist to provide the required knowledge or experience and also more extensive services if chosen, because creating content is much different from merely consuming it and the technologies, tools and trends change incredibly fast. Several case studies were analysed to gain insights about guidelines, etiquette, risks, challenges and achievements in the social media arena. The various lessons demonstrated the importance of establishing guidelines for social media participation. The case studies further demonstrated that the level of transparency the world has now, won’t support having different identities for a person. Everybody need to understand and accept the societal shift and adjust their behaviour accordingly, if they want to achieve success in the digital arena. This is also of the essence to CEO’s – as their companies will increasingly require their involvement in the social media arena, in order to remain relevant. All the relevant factors were taken into consideration in order to compile a suggested framework for personal social media strategy compilation. Following the framework, not as a recipe but as a mere guideline, will assist individuals to draw up their own personal social media strategy. The strategy consists of four phases, namely planning, organising, execution and monitoring and are set out with several building blocks contained in each, as well as advice on how to approach each building block. Despite the formality of the given framework, it is imperative to remember to have fun – if the creator is not, the audience certainly also won’t and all the effort will most definitely be wasted. Key words: Personal social media strategy; Social media; Social networking; Social media guidelines; Personal social media strategy framework