The Social Network Application Post-Adoptive Use Model (SNAPUM): A Model Examining Social Capital and Other Critical Factors Affecting the Post-Adoptive Use of Facebook

Introduction Social Networking Applications (SNAs) have experienced a surge in popularity in recent years. The term Social Networking Application is used in this paper instead of the more common Social Networking Site (SNS) because it is less platform specific (web sites are no longer the only means of social network content delivery) and is more inclusive of mobile devices and other means of accessing social networking computing offerings. Recent data suggests that 65% of U.S. teens use a SNA and up to 35% of Internet users age 55 and older make use of SNAs (Lenhart 2009). In 2008, nine SNAs reported registered users of over 50 million each (Cardon, 2009). Four of those nine are estimated to have received over 100 million unique visitors, and two of the nine reported over 200 million unique visitors (Schonfeld, 2008). Among SNAs, Facebook has demonstrably outgrown its rivals growing an estimated 157 percent from 2008 to 2009. In 2009 Facebook had grown so large that it was estimated to be the fourth largest Internet site in the world, trailing only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo (Schonfeld, 2009), and as of March 2010, at least one measuring method showed Facebook to have surpassed Google in weekly U.S. traffic (Hardawar 2010). Since 2009, Facebook has embarked on a growth spurt that has more than quadrupled the amount of active users (more than 500 million active users as of July 21, 2010), at times growing by over 700,000 users per day (Smith, 2009; Zuckerberg, 2010). Translated into over 100 languages, Facebook has demonstrated its ability to penetrate nearly one third of the national population in many developed nations, and these international growth rates are increasing (Smith, 2010). Thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, Facebook may be modeling the most explosive growth curve ever experienced by an information technology. If there is a "killer app" for social networking, Facebook is it. Now is certainly the time to examine Facebook and its users during its highest growth phase and while it is still developing. Social networking applications, such as Facebook, have become part of what we can call the informing environment, which can be understood as the collection of factors and influences that affect, enable, and limit the process of informing clients (Cohen, 2009). SNAs allow informers and clients to become interconnected by creating informal networks of friends to whom they communicate with and share information. According to Rambe and Ng'ambi (2009, p. 64), "an informer may focus on a subset of a network as a target to be informed," thus creating "layers of complexity and barriers to seeking and sharing information. " Facebook's popularity notwithstanding, there is little research that has empirically examined the critical factors that contribute to the continued use of Facebook, or other SNAs, beyond initial adoption, and none to our knowledge that use an informing science transdisciplinary approach. Therefore, the research question for this present study is: What factors contribute to users continuing to use Facebook after adopting it? Also noticeably absent are technology post-adoption studies that incorporate social capital as a motivating factor. Social capital is the benefits attained from the information shared and the relationships in which an individual participates. The core idea is that social networks have value. However, as Cohen (2009) discussed, there are issues in the informing environment that affect how clients attend, perceive, and act on information provided, thus influencing the social capital derived. The desire to obtain social capital can be a motivator for continued participation in the social networking informing environment. This study strives to fill the gap in transdisciplinary post-adoptive SNA research by examining the factors contributing to the post-adoptive continued use of Facebook and to advance the technological use theory stream by demonstrating the role that social capital can play in social networking technologies. …