Teens Expand Network Through Social Media Diversification
With new social media platforms emerging, users are able to expand their network by “not putting all their eggs in one basket” but diversifying their outlets for potential new connections. When considering that social media adoption rates are growing, the network effect becomes evident as the more people that use each platform, the more valuable the company/service becomes. For example, Facebook has close to one and a half billion active monthly users which should translate into a large amount of social value; but as the growth rate of Facebook increases at a decreasing rate, users are beginning to accumulate their social media platforms to increase the size and strength of their connections in a network.
Users hope to gain a larger network by expanding their use of social media platforms. This can be seen in the Piper Jaffray semiannual survey of American teens, as one-third ranked the photo-sharing app Instagram as their most important social network. Right behind Instagram was Twitter which finished second with 20% of respondents selecting it as their favorite service. Next was Sanpchat with 19% of respondents selecting it as their favorite service. Trailing all three was Facebook with only 15% of respondents claiming the service as their favorite. Though Facebook has the largest number of users, we can clearly see that user preferences are changing in the direction of other social media platforms. Though one could say that Facebook had a first mover advantage in regards to the aforementioned social media platforms, it is clear that users are not looking to put all their resources in one social media network but spread their resources throughout various social media networks.
The diversification of social media platforms may potentially allow users to develop weaker ties into strong ties as you can connect with someone through more than one platform; this multi-platform connection to nodes may allow for the possibility of a stronger, multi-dimensional relationship and tie-strength as each social media platforms has their own unique attributes. These social media platforms vary in their communication style. For example, Snapchat is widely used to share multimedia “moments” with friends, but Facebook is more of a online social network, in the traditional sense, as it offers users the opportunity to connect with and stay up to date with “friends”.
In closing, these changes in social media platform preferences helps distinguish between which platforms are gaining the most usability by users. With many users using more than one platform to manage and track their nodes, we can see how the diversification of social media platforms can help shape and develop connections and tie-strength within various social network webs.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/16/survey-finds-teens-prefer-instagram-snapchat-among-social-networks/
http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/