MOTIVATIONS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE USERS: A STUDY ON FACEBOOK

Facebook social network has today already attracted more than half a billion users and been widely adopted, particularly by young people, all over the world. naturally, the social sciences are increasingly interested in understanding the characteristics of such social network sites. in this study, the uses and gratifications approach was employed to determine the factors motivating university students to use facebook. a two-stage approach was adopted; in the first study, 144 users generated words or phrases to describe how they used facebook and what they enjoyed about their use. these phrases were then coded into 43 items. in study two, these items were evaluated by 408 facebook users. factor analysis identified six uses and gratifications; photograph/video, user friendliness, community awareness, personal data collection and dissemination, usage preferences and social connections. some user demographics and facebook use patterns were associated with different uses and gratifications.