Social Media: Understanding User Patterns and Compliance Issues

Abstract

Social media has quickly become a central component of many people’s lives. While it can be a tool for personal enjoyment, social media has become a big business and many companies are attempting to reach the audiences that social media platforms have quickly garnered. The goals of the study were to determine: the nature and extent of social media use for business versus personal use; which social media platforms were used for business versus personal use; gather certain information regarding use patterns with social media, particularly regarding the nature and extent of “friending”; individuals’ attitudes regarding disclosures via social media; as well as the level of review of corporate polices and social media privacy policies.

The Lares Institute sent surveys to 802 individuals in the United States, and received 741 responses. The following is a summary of highlights from the study on social media: The overwhelming majority of those surveyed use some form of social media. However, significantly more people use social media for personal use than for business use. Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn were identified as the most popular social media services overall. Facebook and LinkedIn are ranked as the most used social media service for business purposes. Facebook easily takes the lead as the most popular social forum when it comes to personal use. On the other hand, the once popular MySpace received one of the lowest usage response rates of all social media services included in the survey. Social media services have seemingly developed a new trend wherein people are accustomed to being “friends” without ever having met. Generally, social media users believe that people voluntarily disclose too much information online. Moreover, a majority of social media users are at least minimally concerned about online privacy. When it comes to compliance policies, only a minority of users actively read the details of social media service policies before accepting. Corporate use of social media is rising - 49% of respondents report that their employer uses social media to promote its products or services. While almost 52% of respondents were aware of a corporate social media use policy, almost 48% reported that their employer either didn’t have a policy, or they were unaware of a policy existing.

Keywords: social media, user patterns, behavioral advertising, trends in online use, Privacy 3.0