Online Social Networking: Redefining the Human Web

Michael L Kasavana, Khaldoon Nusair & Katherine Teodosic. ?Online Social Networking: Redefining the Human Web.? Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology. Bingley: 2010. Volume 1.?

Introduction

The emergence of the internet has had subtle but profound changes in the way people search, locate, and access information and subsequently communicate, conduct business, and learn from each other. It is estimated that more than two-thirds of adults in the USA use the internet (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2007). The evolution of internet technology has led to the development of a collection of technologies known as Web 2.0. According to a report by Forrester Research, enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is projected to reach US$4.6B globally by 2013. Web 2.0 covers a range of technologies (e.g. blogs, wikis, podcasts, tags, and social networks). Online social networking (OSN), a platform that enables users to publicize personal information and to connect with others with similar interests, is one of the primary activities of Web 2.0 technologies. With continuous advancements in information technology, it is expected that OSNs will play a crucial role in future personal and commercial online interactions, as well as the location and organization of information and knowledge. Thus, the goal of this paper is to provide an in-depth overview of OSNs with attention to potential implications for the hospitality industry.

OSNs have recently gained significant popularity and are now considered among the most popular sites on the web; the purpose of such sites being to uniquely distribute information and products (Kim et al. , 2004). In the literature, OSNs are defined according to several diverse features as described by a number of scholars. For example, Boyd and Ellison (2007) referred to OSNs as web-based applications that allow users to:

• Develop a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system;
• Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection; and
• Share and traverse their list of connections.

Balas (2006) defined OSN as a platform used as a mean for building online communities, where individuals from around the world can connect with each other for a variety of reasons. Similarly, OSN is defined by Preece and Maloney-Krichmar (2005) as ?people who come together for a particular purpose, and who are guided by policies [...], and supported by software.? Overall, OSN is an online virtual community where a user can create a profile and build a network of people with similar interests or activities.

Several research studies have used various behavioral theories such as social network analysis (Wellman and Gulia, 1999), life cycle models (Alon et al. , 2004), and motivational theories (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2002) for studying OSNs. While the purpose of these studies varied, the focal points included research questions related to: purpose, influence, knowledge, opinion, and behavior of participants. While there are many types of OSNs (Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, Plaxo, Social Picks, iVillage, and LinkedIn), the five generic business models of OSNs include (Lenard, 2004):

• General. OSN to meet and socialize with friends, share content, schedules, and interests. (e.g. MySpace, Orkut, and Facebook).
• Practice. A network of professionals and practitioners, creators of artifacts such as computer code or music. (e.g. JustPlainFolks, Plaxo, and LinkedIn).
• Interest. A network built around a common interest, such as games, sports, music, stock market, politics, health, finance, and foreign affair (e.g. E-democracy.org ?political discussion group,? SocialPicks ?stock market site?).
• Affinity. A network of people who self-identify with a demographic or geographic category, such as women, African American, and Arab Americans (e.g. iVillage ?focusing on women?).
• Sponsored. Community created by commercial, government, and nonprofit organizations for a variety of goals. (e.g. Nike, IBM).

Most social networks enable participants to create a personal profile, construct a list of ?friends? (either unidirectional or bidirectional), and can traverse lists of friends. Additionally, optional network features include: personal messaging, commenting, photo- and video-sharing, and built-in blogging. While there are hundreds of OSNs globally, the popularity of identical sites tends to vary from country to country. While a majority of domestic sites (e.g. Ning, Orkut, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and LinkedIn) are popular and thereby enjoy national engagement, there are also a broad array of local networks that receive significant traffic. While some sites are dedicated primarily to meeting and networking with new people (e.g. LinkedIn or JDate), there are also sites committed to establishing communication linkages within an extended network. It is these links between people in virtual communities that creates many distant relationships that would otherwise be highly unlikely without a social networking platform (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).

Oftentimes it is the unique features of social network sites (SNS) that allow strangers to instantly connect and interact with one another to exchange information, promote concepts or ideas, and establish common interest pipelines. Interconnectivity has been shown to alter the dynamics of a social network by adding channels that often include friends, family, business associates, colleagues, and strangers. Active users tend to participate in multiple networks including a business network, community service network, college alumni network, career colleague network, travel network, hobby-based network, and family and friends. Web 2.0 provides a platform to achieve unparalleled marketing opportunities across the hospitality industry landscape (O?Meara, 2008).

Although the concept dates back to the 1960s, OSNs have achieved tremendous growth with the advent of the internet (Leonard, 2004). A study by Mislove et al. (2007) on social networks has reported the growth of several popular OSNs according to the number of users, namely, MySpace (more than 190 million users, Orkut (in excess of 62 million users), LinkedIn (over 11 million users, and LiveJournal (more than 5.5 million users). It is projected that there are more than one million self-descriptive personal profiles available across different web-based social network platforms within the US (Liu and Maes, 2005). Although the number of OSN sites has grown to several hundred, some sites have failed to remain in operation (e.g. society.com) while others have sustained heavy financial losses (e.g. elsitio.com). The key strategies for a successful social network as suggested by Leimeister and Krcmar (2004) include: handle member data sensitivity, maintain stability of the web site in terms of the consistency of content, services, and of information offered, provide fast response time of the web site, provide up-to-date content, offer continuous community control with regard to member satisfaction, and establish codes of behavior to prevent potential conflict.

Literature Review

The concept of social networking has progressed from word of mouth conversation, to broadcast testimonial, to digital media content. During the past two decades, the web evolved from a simplex medium (one-direction communication) to a full-duplex format (simultaneous multi-directional communication) capable of supporting virtual communities, special interest groups, and opinion-based blogs and wikis. As a result, mediated and unmediated web sites, assisted by sophisticated social media tools, has created collaborative environments that facilitate conversation and interaction that otherwise would not be readily possible (Gregory, 2003).

From its inception, the internet was designed originally as a communication tool to connect scientists in order to share data, knowledge, and opinions (Hiltzik, 1999). With the development of the web in the 1990s, the community-building impact of the internet strengthened. Early attempts at OSN included internet discussion groups such as Usenet, bulletin board services, and e-mail lists such as ListServ. The evolution of sites with broader appeal followed, such as Classmates.com (1995) and SixDegrees.com (1997). While Classmates.com simply allowed users to affiliate with high school and/or university mates, it did not enable the creation of a personal profile or direct connectivity to select classmates (i.e. friends lists), SixDegrees.com was among the first web sites to allow users to perform multiple functions at a single site, including creating a profile, sending messages to ?friends,? and searching for people with similar interests. From 1997 to 2001, a number of sites (including AsianAvenue, CyWorld, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, LunarStorm, Ryze.com, Tribe.net, and MiGente) allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profiles. Over the past decade several innovative SNS have been created to satisfy several niche markets, the most prominent of which are MySpace and Facebook introduced in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

OSNs, also referred to as SNS, became increasingly attractive as reach became global. It was not until 2002, with the evolution of cellular technology, that users became capable of accessing OSNs from anywhere at any time. This use of cell phones significantly impacted the popularity of OSN web sites. For several years, MySpace remained the most widely used OSN site until Facebook expanded worldwide and enabled anyone with an e-mail address to join the Facebook network (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).

In 2007, Facebook was reported to have more than 21 million members with 1.6 billion generated page views each day (Needham and Company, 2007). In addition, a comScore study indicates that from June 2007 to June 2008, Facebook was the fastest growing SNS with 153 percent growth; growth that propelled Facebook past MySpace in total number of unique visitors (comScore, 2008). Facebook, originally developed for college students, faculty, and staff has expanded to include high school, corporate, and geographic communities.

Most OSN sites enable users to interact based on shared interests, political perspectives, or specific activities (e.g. travel, lodging, and foodservice). While some OSN sites are devoted to serving diverse audiences, a majority seek to attract participants based on common themes or shared beliefs. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and apply communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, wikis, chat, and photo/video-sharing (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). On average, it is estimated that an active user spends about 20 minutes a day on Facebook, with two-thirds of users logging on at least once a day (Cassidy, 2006). A study by Ellison et al. (2007) reported the elements that respondents most often include in a Facebook profile. Nearly all Facebook users include high school name in their profile (96 percent); an indication that maintaining connections to former high school classmates remains a strong motivator for using Facebook.

A study by Pfeil and Zaphiris (2009) investigated the association between content and social networking based on content analysis of 400 messages over one-and-one-half-years. In the code scheme, consecutive sentences within one message that share the same meaning are taken as one text unit and coded into a single code. Thus, one message consists of one or more text units. The 400 messages were separated into 869 text units. These text units were sorted into seven different categories (community building, self-disclosure, deep support, light support, medical facts, slightly off, and technical issues). Early OSNs had a difficult time raising revenues but as networks evolved, sponsors learned how best to monetize the large number of participants. Once reliant on subscription fees, OSNs broadened the revenue base by contracting fee-based advertising.

OSNs and The Hospitality Industry

Along with the rapid growth in internet users, OSNs applications have become highly popular throughout the hospitality industry as an increasing number of businesses have created profile pages for popular SNS as well as initiate privatized, standalone sites. The following section presents examples of hospitality industry applications.

Similar to many other large chain hotel companies, Sheraton Hotels has created a proprietary OSN site, but unlike other major hotel web sites, however, once a guest visits Sheraton.com he or she is immediately greeted by the phrase ?Welcome to the neighborhood? that appears in the center of the screen. This OSN site is designed to unite a community of travelers worldwide through story-, picture-, and video-sharing experiences. The web site allows Sheraton guests to share personal moments encountered at a Sheraton property, or its affiliate. Select content of this site is open to the general public (e.g. potential guests, guests, staff members, management, and others). In addition, online media enables Sheraton guests to connect to a favorite interest area or sports team (Grossman, 2007). For example, through links at Sheraton.com, a college sports fan can gain access to NCAA message boards, blogs, and other viral communities. Sheraton hotels partnered with Microsoft to create Link@Sheraton, a communication hub accessible in hotel lobbies that compose a social network at the property level. Registered guests are able to connect electronically with friends and family as well as socialize with each other (Watkins, 2009).

The Reefs Hotel Resort, an independent luxury property, engages its guests through a variety of social media tools, the most popular being monthly photo contests entitled ?Memories at The Reefs? and ?Beautiful Bermuda.? Guests are encouraged to submit, comment, and vote on displayed photos. Monthly winning photos are posted for an extended period of time at the site. The Reefs also offers a public blog enabling the chronicling of sponsored events, activities, and property-based informational updates. In addition, a testimonial blog and a real-time link to Google Earth are also popular add-ons.

An extreme example of social networking in the lodging industry is the Pod Hotel located in New York City. From the time a guest makes a reservation, they are assigned a username and password to gain access to the hotel?s SNS termed PodCulture. Logging onto this site enables guests to create a user profile for communication and interaction with other registered guests on the Pod Community Blog as well as contacting hotel staff through a community message board. This feature serves as a virtual concierge since questions that guests post on the site are monitored and answered daily by the hotel?s concierge (Pod Hotel, 2008). The interactive message board includes separate sections entitled ?Drink With Me,? ?Eat With Me,? ?Shop With Me,? and ?Go Out With Me?; thereby allowing guests to self-select each other during the duration of a stay. The Pod Hotel is designed to cater to the socializing sensibilities of the firm?s target audience 20-35 year old upscale travelers. To capitalize on its social network, the Pod Hotel also implemented unique features to create a sense of community among tech-savvy guests thereby allowing them to connect with the hotel staff in an innovative manner. In addition, the Pod Hotel web site also offers guests a Survival Guide , updated daily by the hotel concierge, containing information about area landmarks and events as well-detailed directions to select destinations. Basically, the hotel?s technology supports an effective guest relations program brought about by creating a sense of community before, during, and after a hotel stay. This was not always the case as the Pod Hotel replaced a formerly failed property named the Pickwick Arms Hotel of New York City. Through its redesign, the Pod Hotel has experienced impressive occupancy statistics and a rare level of customer loyalty (O?Malley, 2008). The Pod Hotel monitors its social media closely to ensure the safety of its participating hotel guests; a priority among social network sponsors (Quenqua, 2008).

Coworker sites

While business social networks are ideal for involving customers in virtual community engagement, online coworker sites can also encourage information exchange, promote interpersonal relationships, and lead to improvements in productivity and loyalty. One goal of coworker communities is to foster word of mouth, trust, contact management, and inclusion of editorial content across the media platform. Evolving OSN platforms include specialized coworker client sites that are dynamic, secure, and flexible. The challenge for coworker sites is to develop scalable and consistent architecture in a cost effective manner that enables participants using different hardware, software, and netware to seamlessly interact. Coworker SNS tend to be a collaboration of organizational intelligence, optimization of employee talents, effective on?and off?premises activities, facilitation of communications, and shared insights related to work environmental situations. By providing a flexible platform, sites allow employees to better express opinions, capabilities, and potential contributions to the business. The hope is that through this medium, management will be better able to match employee talents and interests to the most appropriate position within the firm.

Coworker sites tend to become a repository of organizational information intended to frame the company into a more cohesive community of staffers who understand teamwork and common goals (i.e. performance enhancement, staffing improvement, career development planning, change management, and leadership training). Unfortunately, such outcomes are not always the case when an intensive and highly communicative platform is implemented. Spending more time collaborating with coworkers may result in negative commentary, workplace fatigue, or workplace interpersonal conflicts. For example, talent searches, intended to identify qualified in-house candidates for an open position, may actually result in the creation of anti-worker bias, outcast listings, and tainted decision making.

Business SNS are not limited by geographic location or time zone. Sites allow potential business partners to easily and inexpensively discuss new projects and potential collaboration. Some business sites help transform successful online connections to offline, in-person networking meetings. Basically, coworker sites incentivize participants by encouraging staffers to get to know peers, administrators, and others in the workplace as well as having others get to know the user.

Most business SNS require creation of an employee profile to facilitate a plan for bringing people together while providing sufficient information to move business forward. The profile, that often includes a photo, helps enable effective collaboration through common interests, skills, and extra-curricular activities. Site content tends to be based on social analytics in terms of messages, photos, insights, data, and videos. A majority of coworker sites are proud of the fact online communities are a foundation for generating cooperation, co-creation, and co-innovation while building brand loyalty, optimizing employee insight, collaboration, and learning; strengthen partner relationships with momentum, innovation, and results; and create a channel of trust through word-of-mouth interactions (HiveLive.com). Sample coworker platforms include Ripple6 (ripple6.com), SuccessFactors (successfactors.com), HiveLIve (hivelive.com), Orkut (orkut.com), Ryze, Tribe, Friendster, and Linkedin.

Organization-based sites

Organizations are increasingly focusing on leveraging internal information as a means of connecting people to people and people to content. Enabling employees to make people to people and people to content connections is one of the most frequently used features of social software as users appear to want to know who knows who and who knows what. With social software and networks, employees with similar interests can find one another and share knowledge?this is very valuable in a global context where it is not possible for every employee to physically meet one another. The potential benefits to the organization in reducing the amount of time wasted looking for information, reducing the amount of unnecessary rework and in improving employee productivity and satisfaction are not to be underestimated (DiMicco et al. , 2008).

A SNS inside an enterprise can play an important role in assisting employees to maintain and develop connections within the company, support networking and career goals, and potentially increase employee social capital. One of the main strengths of SNS is support for people sense-making while facilitating search for persons with particular skills or interests. Organization-based SNS can also help employees establish common ground and this can improve interpersonal communication with the organization. But the process by which users synthesize profiles into meaningful models and filter the models down to a select set of people they wish to contact is currently not explicitly supported in these sites (DiMicco and Millen, 2008).

Implications

The trend towards global, daily use and familiarity with SNS has the potential to evoke powerful changes within the hospitality landscape. Since the hospitality industry involves connecting and engaging guests with goods and services, in a personalized manner, OSN sites have the potential to serve as effective platforms for promotional delivery. The recent emergence of OSN sites has changed the technological and communications, and marketing landscape of the hospitality industry. As suggested by Wang et al. (2002), OSNs can be used by travel retailers to enhance their existing travel products and to create new divisions and capabilities.

There has been much written on the level of activity by bloggers sharing travel experiences, select accommodation recommendations, critiques of ambiance and service, as well as the plethora of hospitality companies monitoring and contributing to self-sponsored sites. Individual hotels may analyze the textual content of their blogs to find out the attributes (e.g. front desk, breakfast, price, cleanness, and location) that are the most important in creating consumer?s favorable image of hotels and achieving customer loyalty. Following the content analysis, hotels can focus their marketing activities on those attributes. Hotels with their own social networks, like Pod Hotel, allows guests to participate in a forum to find other guests to eat, drink, and/or shop with during a hotel stay. The attractiveness and impact of social media has exploded in popularity as consumers turn to online networking to share ideas, suggestions, photos, videos, and diaries; while developing friendships and business associates within a virtual community. While social networking can help a hospitality firm strengthen guest loyalty and satisfaction, it can also lead to the posting of unanticipated and unfair negative opinion, inaccurate information, and unearned criticism (Kasavana, 2008).

As might be expected, research has proven that when personal input is mostly anonymous, as it is with many social platforms, participants are likely to have a polarized stance, opinion, or critique. The trend towards social networking offers an unprecedented opportunity for hospitality firms to garner a competitive advantage by analyzing submitted feedback, contemplating constructive advice, and determining how best to enhance guest experiences (Kasavana, 2008).

Social media researcher Cindy Estis Green, Managing Partner at The Estis Group, has identified the evolutionary progressions of internet marketing within the hospitality industry (Green and Warner, 2006). From 1995-2000, Green states that online, electronic brochures were offered to interested prospective guests to help attract business, but since the simplex web sites were incapable of interactivity, they were not found to be impactful. The period 2001-2005 is characterized by the introduction of viable online business processes brought about through the implementation of e-commerce scripts coupled with reliable search and booking engines. Together, these advancements provided a platform for user controlled (self-service) transactions. Estis Green identified 2006 as the beginning of the era of effective customer engagement. Social media, now capable of supporting bi-directional conversations and information exchanges between consumers and businesses, provides consumers significant control over the results of such engagements (Hospitality Technology Magazine , 2008). The current era provides an infrastructure enabling hospitality marketers to develop programs aimed at strengthening customer loyalty, expanding competitive advantage, and enhancing the guest experience through guest interaction prior to, during, and following occupancy at a lodging property. Technology has altered the guest-property interactivity sequencing by being applied at multiple touch-points throughout the guest cycle; including property search routines, online booking engines, real-time in-house feedback, and post-checkout surveying. Now conversations continue well past a guest?s overnight stay.

The parameters of OSN possess several unique implications for the hospitality industry including guests, staff, and management. First, the internet provides a platform for an unparalleled rating system that can be used to generate, monitor, and evaluate reputation and image of the business. Online consumer-generated content is perceived as highly credible and in fact, more so than information attributed to the hospitality entity (Starkov and Mechoso, 2008).

A significant proportion of hospitality consumers garner advice and perception from blogs, wikis, chats, forums, and online communities. Creating a unique social network that allows participants to create a profile and share opinions, feelings, stories, photos, and the like can be a source of competitive advantage or disadvantage. If a guest elects to participate in an online network, shares a testimonial or recounts an experience or downloads photographic content, others in the network are likely to be affected by the sentiment of the postings. More so than the content contained at a property specific or industry related web site (Green, 2009).

Hospitality properties should be cognizant of the potential impact of content contributions in the virtual world. Potential guests appear to be active participants in online conversations through postings, ratings, and advising (Hospitality Technology Magazine , 2008). While hospitality firms favor positive image and experience reporting, more often than not feedback appears to be unpredictable, arbitrary, and highly subjective. When companies immerse themselves into the conversations and postings of the virtual world, there often is a tendency to try and combat, manage, control, or remove comments deemed inaccurate or divergent. Unfortunately, this often is not an achievable or desirable action. Most social network contributors tend to be skeptical or untrusting of sites that do not have any negative or critical comments. When such a site is encountered, the natural reaction of the viewer is to assume ownership or management of the hospitality company is responsible for censorship by site content control. Instead, hospitality firms may be wise to view such commentary as an opportunity for resolution or reparation of the negative situation, or at least offer an explanation, as opposed to an excuse (Starkov and Mechoso, 2008).

Every day millions of virtual conversations are conducted across the complex infrastructure of social networks worldwide. Hospitality brand managers and marketers need to be mindful of the value of ?listening in? on such dialogues and consider participation as a viable contributor without being too invasive. Through social networking participation a firm may be able to improve customer engagement and expand brand equity. Research indicates engaged customers tend to spend more money, be more frequent guests, and pass referral information to friends, both in the virtual and physical world (Hospitality Technology Magazine , 2008).

Hospitality company participation in OSN has been shown to be a cost-effective means for interaction and engagement with potential clientele. Membership in an OSN site provides direct access to active users without the need to acquire additional hardware, software, or netware. A SNS that is easily accessible, straightforward, and appealing enables participants to become engaged in unique ways (Aggarwal, 2008). A virtual environment that fosters interactivity by continuously encouraging traffic creates the opportunity for a broad spectrum of guests to become involved that otherwise might not have had interested. An approach that tends to increase bottom line profitability while containing associated marketing costs.

Additionally, the presence of an existing, large special interest community (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter) serves as a target population for a profile page without having to solicit prospects individually. Once a group profile is created, data mining to determine additional niche or special interest segments can be conducted. Creating a group page also provides hospitality companies the opportunity to attract additional participants through customized strategies designed to advance the company?s goals and visions (Greenfield, 2008).

Conclusion

Although the concept of an OSN, particularly within a hospitality business context, is a relatively new idea, it does present many potential benefits. Recent statistics indicate that two-thirds of online adult travelers consume online video and audio clips, four in ten read blogs, share photos and take virtual tours, and one in four posts responses to blogs?the benefits derived from these interactivities can be significant. Although measuring the costs and benefits of SNS remains unscientific, the magnitude of influence may be best reflected through benchmarking competitive advantage, productivity, and profitability.

Research points to three broad factors: creativity, expertise, and collective intelligence. Evidently participants believe they can enhance and express creativity through communication and interaction on a virtual site. As far as expertise is concerned, an OSN is perceived by participants as an expert tool, as it offers a basis for the detection of emerging social trends and recognition of changes in consumer behavior, including member profiles, behavioral patterns, and associated lists of contacts. Additionally, OSNs may be a means of aligning individual thinking with collaborative intelligence leading to group consensus.

Coworker sites have recently begun to appear as a viable social media platform. While these sites are intended to enhance the workplace environment by encouraging staffers to get to know more about peers, administrators, and others in the organization, this plan has not always been a positive experience. The unintended consequences of OSNs become evident as coworker, and related sites, become the basis for infighting, workplace battles, and even off-premises skirmishes.

The continuous introduction of sophisticated technological applications at OSNs is illustrative of a change in the organization and administration of online communities. While web sites dedicated to communities of interest still exist and prosper, newer networks are primarily organized around people, not interests. Early online communities supported public discussion and intellectual forums focused on topical issues. SNS have evolved to be structured as personal networks, with individuals holding the center of their own community. This depiction more accurately reflects the unmediated social structures that have become so popular. The introduction of OSN features has led to unique organizational frameworks for online communities (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).

While OSNs have become one of the most advanced forms of communication, there are several potential risks associated with online networking, including:

• Sharing personal information with the wrong people can lead to financial, emotional, and physical damages;
• Lack of rigorous authentication with an OSN site makes it possible to create a false profile;
• Excessive babbling and opinionated chatter at a social site can generate unwanted and unwarranted gossip about a particular property, person, or organization;
• Unscrupulous competitors may devise and apply intrusive social engineering techniques designed to delve into unauthorized intellectual property;
• Individual profiles often include the e-mail address of members thereby creating unnecessary exposure, threat of identity theft, and risk of spamming; and
• Young people may be falsely lured into an unsavory social network that is engaged in illegal, unethical, or harmful activities.

Source: http://www.omnilogos.com/2011/05/27/online-social-networking-redefining-the-human-web/

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