What makes social networking addictive?
Why do you or others keep coming back to a social networking website every day, after they have signed up? This could include anything from LinkedIn, to Facebok, to Digg, to Flickr.
Answers (28)
Robert F
Podcaster at podcastGenealogy.com
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I think there are many factors ... the simplest is the ability to be social without the fears that arise when you are face-to-face with someone ...
Andrew G
Telessassin | Cold Calling Afficionado | Business Development Account Representative at Blue Ocean Contact Centers
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It's like collecting cards, or comic books, or marbles, or jewelry, or movies, or LPs, or...
Anything interactive that allows you to build upon a list of things that you have but others don't, for some reason, seems to be highly addictive to humans.
- Andrew
George L
Engineering Manager at GoldenWare Travel Tech and Owner, NetMasters LLC (podjacker@gmail.com)
Social Networking tends to fullfill a desire for influence and approval by allowing individuals to monitor and increase their influence within their peer groups. While an individual is getting personal satisfaction from tendering their sphere of influence they tend to be dragged back in when the opportinity for increased influence arises... but as the size of a an individuals network grows the amount of increase required to impact the same amount of influence changes rapidly, and users tend to become less interested in the work for results ratiol.
Links:
We're social beings. We use technology to amplify or simulate our social contact.
If a social network uses technology in a way to amplify or simulate people's prefered or fantasized social methods, we use it habitually.
For me, it is like going to the local coffee shop or bar to check out what everyone is up to, except I can do it on my own time and don't have to coordinate with anyone, but I can still interact. Ease of info.
Diana H
Distance Learning Designer at Blackbaud
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For me it is just too hard to get out and network face to face with all the other commitments I have. It just seems easier to take a few minutes here and there during the day to look and see what's happening. I find sites like Facebook, Digg, and Flickr to be more of the fun social networking sites while LinkedIn is career/professional oriented. I find it helpful and I learn a great deal of information.
Social networks are websites that make participation accessible. Think of it like an old static website that now allows interactions on the fly between user & user or user & owner etc. This user-generated-content (of many flavors) is more sticky that a static page.
I do most of my social networking here on LinkedIn. I keep coming back because I keep finding old colleagues and friends online. As I'm currently between jobs, I find this a useful place to network with a lot of people in a relatively short period of time - and that might be said by users of most other social networks as well.
Marc A
Product, Program and Project Manager
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Socializing is addictive - in fact addiction is probably a bad word - it's FUN. The internet version of it simply expands the available options for socializing - especially when you don't feel like going out!
A few things:
* The ability to express myself and have other people react to what I've done. I'm addicted to the interactions I've got with people online. I want to see what they're doing - and react - and have them see what I'm doing and react.
* I love the fact that I can expand my social circle outside of my own geographical area. The world is too small and life is too short to be limited by geography. I like to keep tabs on my peeps all over the world.
The zeitgeist. Anything informed via complexity has inherently more information (in the Claude Shannon sense) than anything which has more linear and refined processes. Chaos = good. I have no particular loyalty toward any social service. They're all windows into the cloud.
For LinkedIn, I use it because it works... I've gotten quite a few interesting interviews as a result of my profile here, opportunities that I would not have gotten in the jungles of Monster.com or Dice.
it's a great combination of usefulness, frivolousness, friendship, acquaintances, and the unexpected.
Sheilah E
Owner, ★SME Management:.......... Business Management and Accounting Consultant
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Hi Will,
I am addicted to linkedins Q&A's LOL I never visit the other sites you mention so I cannot speak on those.
Sheilah
2 big things that I see:
1) Making explicit connections to our "friends" in social networking sites enables us to build a system of filters. We don't have to deal with everything on a site like Linked, just what our friends are doing, saying, creating. That's what makes social networking different - filters.
2) The key is the "flow" - the constant flow of interesting information that is produced by our friends. The content that is produced in social networking sites is inherently interesting to us - we know those people.
Facebook does this better than any other site right now - they make the flow of participation a big part of the experience. In this case, the flow isn't just a blog post or a discussion, but the small actions taken by your friends. "Will added a photo".
In the end, the flow becomes addictive because it enables us to feel that much closer to people we consider friends in one way or another. As long as people are participating, friends will be watching and we can't get enough.
Links:
- http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000593.html
- http://www.commoncraft.com/facebook-addiction-and-new-news
Clarification added June 8, 2007:
This question prompted a blog post - it's the second one linked at the bottom...
Naived M
[LION] Program Manager, Operations and Delivery Leader [naived@gmail.com]
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Humans, being social animals, need acceptance and crave visibility.
Social networking provides a perfect environment for our basic need of belonging within a group. With international boundaries melting away and the globe becoming a global village where seven degrees of separation is the maximum it takes to know anyone, people now want to belong to diverse socio-cultural groups that bring in multiple perspectives to the same questions.
One of the fringe benefits of social networking is growth in acceptability. The more your contact list grows, the more you are acceptable within your social network. People with high social network worth are able to pull in the right credits when required.
You're fishing, Will, so the question actually answers itself. This gives you the opportunity to seek validation of your ideas without the risks that would normally be associated with exposing them.
But I think Lee had it right with his description of "flow" - which is much the same as what we were striving for with Flock, that sense of being "in the room" with your acquaintances in an increasingly isolated workplace. See resources for my blog post on that theme - I think it plays a big role in this.
Links:
Thats a good question ;-)
I just came back here after months. The reason I DONT use those sites regularly is for privacy reasons ;-)
I dont see any value in those sites except snooping on whoknowswho and thats not what I am after.
Keep in mind that the info we - the users - provide is VERY valuable to Linkedin etc. as they can follow up on anybody with social engineering skills.
So from my site I am not such a big fun of such sites.
To connect a feeeling of belonging. Its a tribal feeling that is so innate in all human being that many of us dont understand our wanting to belong. Its the hope of making a connection with another beign that shares the name likes and passions that you do.
Fortune cookies. No wait, that's an actual real place, with tables and tea and chopsticks...in reality, I want information, and connections, and mutual voyeurism, I think. Not that kind, but the kind where you can just see things about people as if from a distance, that safety or cushion people describe.
Links:
For me, social networks are not addictive. They're tools, and that's the way I tend to use them. I rarely read Digg unless I'm a little bored or need a little break--it's not a network for me, but a news site and a time waster.
I barely use LinkedIn, because we haven't had a shortage of work for a couple of years, and I can generally find corporate partners through more established, more reliable networks.
Flickr is a frustrating one for me. I use it as 'a place to back up photos, and a place to host photos for my blog'. I have no use for it as a social network. Unfortunately, other users expect me to want to engage in the social aspects of the app--they invite me to groups, pools, projects and so forth and expect me to be monitoring their photo feeds. When I decline, I feel kind of anti-social.
It's too early to say on Facebook. It's become the de facto network of the moment, so I'm obligated to engage with it. It has been fun to rediscover old classmates and friends, but I'm not sure how I'll use it in the long run.
To its credit, Flickr does a good job of not dictating our behaviour as users. Unfortunately for me, the default behaviour around Flickr among my peers is one of high activity.
Generally, I like James M. Woods's answer about tribalism below. That seems to be the most obvious, natural answer, particularly when you look at social networks in historical terms. Plus, of course, Mr. Woods did such fine work in "Jurassic Park".
Clarification added June 8, 2007:
I wanted to add something: let's not forget about all the 'addictive' social networks which have gone before the current set: Friendster, Orkut, MySpace (not gone, but going, I think) and so forth. If these things are addictive, then people keep seeking different drugs.
For myself, my level of interaction within a social network is directly relative to the usefulness of the tool, and the uptake rate/usage among the people that I actually want to connect with.
My LinkedIn account sits mostly dormant, while I refresh my Facebook news feed countless times throughout the day. Fact is, I don't have dozens of old friends each week asking me to connect on LinkedIn, Digg or the like, so Facebook seems to be where I hang. Flickr is something of a rabbit hole for me too; my interaction with the site seems to increase each week. Blame that partially on the new cameras, but especially on the new friends I've made on photowalks, etc.
As Darren says, they are just tools, and we apply the strategy and the content that is worth coming back for.
Who says they are addictive!?
Ok they are.
Sense of belonging is a big one for me, and the actual "social" part is major too.
I have started to use these social networking site as a way to follow my friends' latest news. When I need information, or when I need to find out something, I turn to the social networking sites. Simply because I have created a little trusted circle already.
For example, if I am looking to use some photo in a design mockup, I would search my contact's photos before anything else.
On the other hand, I use upcoming.org and actually post events there for a different reason. I have found out many amazing events through upcoming, I want to share to give it back to the community.
Catherine S
R&D Engineer
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It is the only way to met people you could never have met otherwise.
People living in other parts of the world, working in other industries, acting sometines at high level within one company...
Answering questions is fun and hopefully useful for people having asked the questions. Asking questions is also a good way to get quick answers sometimes not very accurate to be fair.
As we are acting several times with the same persons asking and answering questions... well it gives a feeling of fellowship.
Does it look so weird ?
Regards
Catherine
Cheyne R
Marketing and Scalable Web Application Development
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There are plenty of practical reasons for loving social sites -- and these practical reasons would correspond with the site's main function. But I suppose the addictiveness would be, as people have mentioned, largely psychological.
We love to discover interesting things - - whether that means a new friend, a great article, some fun photos, whatever. The user-generated nature of social networking sites offers a seemingly endless production of new material...most of it is chaff, but some of it is interesting.
It's fun and addictive to sift through sites and find the hidden gems. The best social sites on the web provide the tools, interface, and information stream to enhance this experience. It isn't only the "discovering" that makes it enjoyable, but the challenge of the search in itself.
Lynne H
Art Director & Design Professional
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I certainly don't consider linkedin to have the same addictive qualites is myspace.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, friendster.com...to name a few! Linkedin doesn't feel like an extension of the grammar school instincts that stubbornly influence social tendencies such as popularity contents and voyeristic tabs/gossiping. For example, I don't know if Tila Tequila could honestly advance her career much by using this website. The structure tends to enforce the quality of connections and relationships over quantity; therefore making fabrication of details difficult. I'm impressed to see how this network has benefitted the users, and continue to focus more energies in developing my presence on it.
But overall people return to service because it benefits them. Just as you would sign up for a magazine subscription or sign online to aim a few years ago, now you sign onto whatever webspace because it is the most convenient way to communicate, network, play, date, pick up new interests...etc.
When I am connected to people that I really know - or better when I am reconnected to people that I have lost contact with
Then when I observe the mundane parts of their lives - as per twitter or Facebook
Then when I develop a long term picture from reading their blogs
Finally when we meet in person
Social networking is addictive because it (at least vaguely) mirrors our real world social experience and relationships. We are social creatures, and anything that helps us become more efficient in our interaction, or more social in general, will draw our attention.
