America
Why more people are sharing less on Facebook
New York, April 6
If you have cut down on the
amount of content you share on Facebook or Twitter even as your lists of
friends and followers grow, you are not alone.
A study
co-authored by an Indian-origin researcher suggests that although more
and more people are participating in social networking, a smaller
percentage of users are actively creating and sharing content.
The
study to be published in the journal Management Science pointed out
that the cheaper and easier it becomes to reach large numbers of people
via social media, the fewer "content creators" choose to participate and
the more cluttered the networks become.
“Social communication
incentives diminish even as the reach or the span of communication
increases,†said study authors Ganesh Iyer and Zsolt Katona from
University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business.
Industry
reports estimate that just 10 percent of Twitter users broadcast 90
percent of the network's tweets, while only a tiny fraction of the 55
million users who blog post daily, Katona noted.
The relative
scarcity of message creators has been noticed before. But what has not
been understood are the mechanisms responsible for the imbalance of
senders and receivers and the implications for the social networking
industry.
The new research suggests that with expansion of the
social network, receivers, who once were the recipient of messages from
only a few senders, are now targeted by many senders, leading to
increased competition for attention.
And the more distant the receiver, the harder it is for the sender to craft relevant messages, the researchers noted.
As
competition grows, some senders decide the payoff is not worth the
trouble and drop out, and others decide not to enter the fray, which
explains why the proportion of senders to receivers is so low.
It
may also explain why some users turn away from popular social networks
and are looking for more intimate places to share items with just a
handful of people, the researchers noted.