Social media as business ecosystem: modeling users' adoption of social networking sites

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have become of fundamental importance in shaping the dynamics of the way people communicate. A primary objective of social media practitioners is to formulate strategies that can lead to higher number of adoption rates among users. The aim of this research is to study adoption of SNSs and to shed light on the factors that influence user preferences. To that end, first, by borrowing theories from business ecosystem, platform business, the technology acceptance model (TAM), and hedonic and utilitarian benefits an initial set of potential measures is reached. Next, the measures are used to create a quantitative survey which is completed by a sample of 100 university students. An exploratory factor analysis performed on the collected data yields four dimensions: 1) platform, measured by control over privacy and ease of use 2) user benefits 3) network, measured by number of friends and members and 4) contributor benefits. Consequently, the results of a conjoint analysis based on uncovered components highlight the considerable importance of control over privacy and ease of use from a user perspective. Moreover, findings show that for users, an optimal SNS where other users share mostly entertaining content, contributors share mostly useful content, applications are mostly fun, control over privacy of posts exists, a good number of friends are registered and accessible, and is easy to use. Results also show that content shared by external contributors is almost as important as content shared by users in shaping preferences. These findings are expected to be of value to both scholars and social media and communications practitioners. --Leaf ii.