research-article

What do people ask their social networks, and why?: a survey study of status message q&a behavior

Authors:

Meredith Ringel Morris,

Katrina PanovichAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1739 - 1748

https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753587

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

People often turn to their friends, families, and colleagues when they have questions. The recent, rapid rise of online social networking tools has made doing this on a large scale easy and efficient. In this paper we explore the phenomenon of using social network status messages to ask questions. We conducted a survey of 624 people, asking them to share the questions they have asked and answered of their online social networks. We present detailed data on the frequency of this type of question asking, the types of questions asked, and respondents' motivations for asking their social networks rather than using more traditional search tools like Web search engines. We report on the perceived speed and quality of the answers received, as well as what motivates people to respond to questions seen in their friends' status messages. We then discuss the implications of our findings for the design of next-generation search tools.

References

[1]

Ackerman, M. and Malone, T. Answer Garden: A tool for growing organizational memory. SIGOIS 1990, 31--39.

Digital Library

[2]

Ackerman, M. and Palen, L. The Zephyr help instance: Promoting ongoing activity in a CSCW system. CHI 1996, 268--275.

Digital Library

[3]

Beenan, G., Ling, K., Wang, X., Chang, K., Frankowski, D., Resnick, P. and Kraut, R.E. Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. CSCW 2004, 212--221.

Digital Library

[4]

Beitzel, S.M., Jensen, E.C., Chowdhury, A., Grossman, D. and Frieder, O. Hourly analysis of a very large topically categorized Web query log. SIGIR 2004, 321--328.

Digital Library

[5]

Bernstein, M., Tan, D., Smith, G., Czerwinski, M. and Horvitz, E. Collabio: A game for annotating people within social networks. UIST 2009, 97--100.

Digital Library

[6]

Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K. Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. Academic Press, 1998.

Digital Library

[7]

DiMicco, J., Millen, D., Geyer, W., Dugan, C., Brownholtz, B. and Muller, M. Motivations for Social Networking at Work. CSCW 2008, 711--720.

Digital Library

[8]

Educase Center for Applied Research. The ECAR Study of Undergraduates and Information Technology 2008. Chapter 6: Social Networking Sites. http://www.educause.edu/ers0808

[9]

Evans, B. and Chi, E. Towards a model of understanding social search. CSCW 2008, 485--494.

Digital Library

[10]

Evans, B., Kairam, S. and Pirolli, P. Do your friends make you smarter? An analysis of social strategies in online information seeking. IP&M, in press.

Digital Library

[11]

Facebook.com Official Statistics Page. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2009. http://facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics.

[12]

Gilbert, E. and Karahalios, K. Predicting tie strength with social media. CHI 2009, 211--220.

Digital Library

[13]

Harper, F.M., Moy, D. and Konstan, J.A. Facts or friends? Distinguishing informational and conversational questions in social Q&A sites. CHI 2009, 759--768.

Digital Library

[14]

Harper, F.M., Raban, D., Rafaeli, S. and Konstan, J.A. Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites. CHI 2008, 865--874.

Digital Library

[15]

Honeycutt, C. and Herring, S. Beyond microblogging: Conversation and collaboration via Twitter. HICSS '09.

[16]

Hsieh, G. and Counts, S. mimir: A market-based real-time question and answer service. CHI 2009, 769--778.

Digital Library

[17]

Huberman, B., Romero, D.M. and Wu, F. Social Networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope. First Monday, 14(1-5), January 2009.

[18]

Joinson, A.N. Looking at, looking up, or keeping up with people? Motives and use of Facebook. CHI 2008, 1027--1036.

Digital Library

[19]

Lampe, C., Ellison, N. and Steinfield, C. Changes in use and perception of Facebook. CSCW 2008, 721--730.

Digital Library

[20]

Lenhart, A. Adults and social network websites. Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 2009.

[21]

Lenhart, A. and Fox, S. Twitter and status updating. Pew Internet and American Life Project, February 2009.

[22]

Morris, M.R. and Horvitz, E. SearchTogether: An interface for collaborative Web search. UIST 2007, 3--12.

Digital Library

[23]

Morris, M.R. and Teevan, J. Collaborative Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Morgan & Claypool, 2009.

Digital Library

[24]

Pirolli, P. An elementary social information foraging model. CHI 2009, 605--614.

Digital Library

[25]

Raban, D. and Harper, F. Motivations for answering questions online. In New Media and Innovative Technologies (2008).

[26]

Smyth, B., Briggs, P., Coyle, M. and O'Mahoney, M. Google shared: A case study in social search. UMAP 2009.

Digital Library

[27]

Teevan, J., Dumais, S. and Horvitz, E. Personalizing search via automated analysis of interests and activities. SIGIR 2005, 449--456.

Digital Library

[28]

Torrey, C., Churchill, E. and McDonald, D. Learning how: The search for craft knowledge on the Internet. CHI 2009.

Digital Library

[29]

Wells, A.T. and Rainie, L. The Internet as Social Ally. First Monday, 13(11), November 3, 2008.

[30]

Zhang, J., Ackerman, M., Adamic, L. and Nam, K. QuME: A Mechanism to Support Expertise Finding in Online Help-Seeking Communities. UIST 2007, 111--114.

Digital Library

Cited By

Kwon NSun TGao YZhao LWang XKim JHong S(2024)3DPFIX: Improving Remote Novices' 3D Printing Troubleshooting through Human-AI Collaboration DesignProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36372888:CSCW1(1-33)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637288
Soliman NKang HLatzke MBragg JChang JZhang AKarger D(2024)Mitigating Barriers to Public Social Interaction with Meronymous CommunicationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642241(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642241
Milton AMaestre JRoy AUmbach RChancellor S(2024)Seeking in Cycles: How Users Leverage Personal Information Ecosystems to Find Mental Health InformationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641894(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641894
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

What do people ask their social networks, and why?: a survey study of status message q&a behavior
1. Applied computing
  1. Document management and text processing
    1. Document preparation
      1. Multi / mixed media creation
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Hypertext / hypermedia

Recommendations

To search or to ask: the routing of information needs between traditional search engines and social networks
CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

In status message question asking (SMQA), members of social networking sites make use of status messages to express information needs to friends and contacts. We present findings from a laboratory study that examined 82 participants' SMQA behaviors in ...
What do teens ask their online social networks?: social search practices among high school students
CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

The majority of American teens use social network sites (SNSs) but little is known about how they leverage their online social networks to find information. As part of a larger study on social media and information behaviors, we surveyed 158 high school ...
Social media question asking workshop
CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work companion

Social media question asking, in which people use Internet technologies to solicit help from other people, is an increasingly common way for people to find information. This workshop brings together researchers studying social media question asking from ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2010

2690 pages

ISBN:9781605589299

DOI:10.1145/1753326

General Chair:
Elizabeth Mynatt
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Vienna University of Technology
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Keith Edwards
Georgia Tech
,
Tom Rodden
University of Nottingham

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 April 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI '10

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '10: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 10 - 15, 2010

Georgia, Atlanta, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

407
Total Citations
View Citations
5,681
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)232
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)22

Reflects downloads up to 23 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Kwon NSun TGao YZhao LWang XKim JHong S(2024)3DPFIX: Improving Remote Novices' 3D Printing Troubleshooting through Human-AI Collaboration DesignProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36372888:CSCW1(1-33)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637288
Soliman NKang HLatzke MBragg JChang JZhang AKarger D(2024)Mitigating Barriers to Public Social Interaction with Meronymous CommunicationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642241(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642241
Milton AMaestre JRoy AUmbach RChancellor S(2024)Seeking in Cycles: How Users Leverage Personal Information Ecosystems to Find Mental Health InformationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641894(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641894
Ye JChua C(2024)Monetization for Content Generation and User Engagement on Social Media Platforms: Evidence from Paid Q&AIEEE Transactions on Engineering Management10.1109/TEM.2022.320953471(4022-4034)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2022.3209534
Liu JFan WLi XLiu X(2024)What drives users’ knowledge payment behaviour? The moderating role of knowledge expertise and social identityBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.2320213(1-21)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2320213
Tandoc ESeet SMak WLua K(2024)Content tracing: examining fact-checking via a WhatsApp group during the COVID-19 pandemicBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.2318613(1-11)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2318613
Salleh NSaahar S(2023)The Perception and Behaviour of Youth in Facebook Towards Active Citizenship AcceptanceProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communication and Media 2022 (i-COME 22)10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_21(226-244)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_21
Marler WHargittai E(2023)Understanding the Evolving Online Learning Landscape: The Case of Science and ReligionSocial Media + Society10.1177/205630512311929729:3Online publication date: 29-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231192972
Saha AGergle DPiper A(2023)Understanding Peer-to-Peer Instructional Support in an Online Community for Blind Audio ProducersProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608399(1-15)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597638.3608399
Wang LRzeszotarski J(2023)Understanding Motivational Factors in Social Media News Sharing DecisionsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35795387:CSCW1(1-30)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3579538
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents