Mobile Social Networks: Communication and Marketing Perspectives

Defining Mobile Social Networks

Social network sites and mobile communications each have their own uniquely powerful characteristics. A social network consists of a set of users and the relations defined on them (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). With the emergence of social network sites, social networks have migrated to the cyberspace. Boyd and Ellison (2008) define a “social network site” as

Most of these sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social connections, others help strangers to establish relationships based on their shared interests. A study by Lenhart (2009) have revealed approximately 90 percent of social network site participants join these sites to stay in touch with friends, while only half of them use their profiles to meet new friends. In communication literature, these interpersonal relationships within social networks are also called ties. The strength of an interpersonal tie (i.e. strong, weak, or absent) is a linear combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy, and the reciprocal services which characterize each tie (Granovetter, 1973). Although a great majority of connections in social networking sites are people who are personally known by the profile owner, many of them are absent or weak-ties (e.g., old friends, distant relatives, barely known colleagues), such that the intimacy, emotional intensity and the amount of time spent together is relatively low.