Differences among university students and faculties in social networking site perception and Use Implications for academic library services


Social networking sites (SNSs) are gaining popularity in various areas. Library and information services also are attempting to utilize them for increasing the library user traffic. Considering the lack of SNS studies in academic library services and various SNS usage patterns according to user type, it is necessary to compare the usage patterns across different user groups. This paper thus aims to explore the usages of a SNS by different university users.

As virtual space is becoming increasingly integrated into people’s everyday lives, virtual communications have emerged as a general trend. These days, social networking sites (SNSs) are leading the current stream. SNSs are profile-based web sites that allow users to maintain social relationships by viewing, visiting, and sharing their lists of social connections with other members (boyd and Ellison, 2007). Recently, a new social-network-based library and information service has emerged to create organizational knowledge (Xiaobin and Jing, 2009; Shuhuai et al., 2009) as well as to satisfy information user needs (Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis, 2007). This service more widely known as Facebook Librarian seems to increase reuse of the library service(Mack et al. , 2007). However, the use of such self-maintaining SNSs has presented two challenges to the study of SNSs. Despite some studies (e.g. Lewis et al. , 2008; Tong et al., 2008) focusing on user behaviors on a particular web site or web service, rather than the general understanding of a unified concept of user behaviors, topics of information user behaviors have remained broad, making it difficult to understand various user groups’ usage patterns in academic settings. Another challenge in studying SNS stems from the limited scope of user populations. Although some studies focus primarily on adult populations (e.g. Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis, 2007), others focus on undergraduate students (e.g. Ellison, 2007; Hargittai, 2008; Lewisn et al. , 2008; Tong et al., 2008), adolescents (e.g. Mazeret al., 2007; Valkenburg et al., 2006), or mixed populations (e.g. Liu, 2007). Despite the fact that SNS usage patterns vary depending on the user types (Ellison et al., 2007; Hargittai, 2008), prior studies have ignored comparisons between different groups’ usage patterns. Furthermore, Asian users’ make up a large proportion of usage rates among a significant number of different sites (Hargittai, 2008), yet few studies have focused on this group.

Implications for academic library services

This section provides implications for SNS-based academic library and information services. According to the findings, undergraduate students mostly regard SNS as an entertainment feature. The younger the users are, the faster they extract the maximum utility out of an internet service. Considering this high sensitivity to trends and short usage cycle, SNS-based library service should continuously upgrade its features, reflecting users’ opinions as much as possible. As the undergraduates concentrate heavily on the profile service, most technical support should also be on this service. In addition to the reflection of the continuous user demands, SNS-based service should occasionally launch new, interesting services in order to attract about-to-quit users as well as new potential users. In other words, SNS-based service needs to keep up with new ideas that match the generation’s flow.

Most graduate students already have a long experience using SNS, which may be one reason why they are negative toward the SNS-based service – especially in regards to the profile service. One administrator of Cyworld supports this idea. He said that, in using the specific hit service such as the Minihompy, users might experience some phenomena like “social network fatigue” suggested by Pasick (2004) after a critical point (Lee, 2008). Thus, it is assumed that the graduate students have quit using the profile service and turned toward the community service. With a moderate experience of using the profile service compared to the undergraduate studnets, graduate students no longer find it entertaining. One possible resolution might be to develop high-quality content, which can be done in several ways, whether in collaboration with other entities or by SNS itself. The direction regarding how and what contents SNS-based service should provide should consider users’ needs as much as possible.

In order to attract faculty users, it seems inevitable that SNS-based service should provide a tailored service to them. However, a trade-off exists in this case, as this would mean the degradation of SNS’s original principles – namely, openness. Despite such an obstacle, some faculty members have an account and have experience using it in the past, which implies that some have realized the advantages of the service. Thus,
SNS-based service should appeal to them by emphasizing the benefits of using SNS in terms of social networking and communication.

One of the attractions in which SNS-based service originally drew people together was the private life exposure by uploading pictures and articles about themselves.However, people later recognized that protecting private information is quite important as they faced cyber-terrorism through the profile pages on which personal information is disclosed. Such cases have become increasingly common recently as it is easy to acquire phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and other personal information just by skimming through postings. Consequently, such incidents have led to the eventual decline of SNS-based service’s popularity as more and more users have adopted a secret feature in the guestbook and closed down the photo gallery. Since then, many users have continuously demanded more security.

However, a trade-off exists between attraction point and protection. The primary principle of SNS is self-expression and disclosure to the public. However, if SNS-based service provides further security, its original concept – which significantly contributed to its popularity – will be distorted. As it cannot discard this trait, SNS-based service should implement strategies that would balance the trade-off to draw academic users’ attention.

Although people can form relationships instantly with the help of friendship-making system, online socialization has its limits to which one can develop such a relationship into a real one. It is now a trend among college students to make friends through SNS and keep the relationships by visiting each other’s profile pages and sending messages and gifts. However, unfortunately, they do not know with whom they are socializing inreal life. Hence, it is inevitable that two different social ties exist: one for real life friends, and one for online friends. Specifically, friendship-making system offers a “surfing” feature that allows users to visit other users’ profile pages. Due to this feature, many have experienced people whom they dislike or do not know visiting their profiles and asking to become a friend. When such a situation arises, it is very likely that most users simply accept the offer. Users are free to decline the invitation; however, it is very hard to do so because of self-image. This is another major reason the friendship cannot replace real social relationships as it faces a constraint.

On SNS-based service, especially as a place to reveal self-identity, if one builds a selfish image by not accepting the offer, then such a reputation could affect not only virtual image-making but also real-life self-identification. However, if SNS-based service removes friendship-making system or further limits its features, it will lose a large number of users, as it has been one of the most popular features of the service.Thus, it would be better to allow users to control their relationship boundary, such as grouping friends and granting different status by groups so that each group has different permissions to which the members can access contents on their profiles.