'You Are Not Alone': Effects of Highlighting Social Aspects on Responsiveness, Joining, and Profile Information Sharing in an Information Portal

摘要

Many information portals are adding social features tornenable benefits of Web 2.0. Such additions are undertakenrnwith hopes of increasing the usefulness of the informationrnand enhancing the overall user experience. Invitations andrnwelcome pages that highlight these social features arernexpected to encourage use and participation. We studied therneffects of emphasizing social features on users’ responses torninvitations, decisions to join, and willingness to providernprofile information. The results of a quasi-experiment foundrnno effect of social emphasis in invitations on receiverrnresponsiveness. However, subjects receiving invitationsrnhighlighting social benefits were less likely to join andrnprovide profile information. Social emphasis in the initialrnwelcome page for the site was also found to have arnsignificant effect on whether individuals joined and howrnmuch profile information they provided and shared.rnUnexpectedly, subjects who were welcomed in a socialrnmanner were less likely to join and provided less profilerninformation. This suggests that even in online contextsrnwhere social activity is an increasingly important factor,rnhighlighting the presence of social features may not alwaysrnbe the optimal presentation strategy.