1) The document discusses whether niche online networks are becoming more popular than large general social networks as personalization and customization features increase. 2) It explores the motivations for using niche social networks, which focus on narrow audiences through characteristics, activities, identities or affiliations, compared to general social networks. 3) The document aims to understand the main factors that drive users to join independent niche social networks over general social networks using Uses and Gratifications theory and Niche theory.

1. NICHE ONLINE NETWORKS
IS NOW THE TIME WHEN LESS IS MORE?
Carlos Osorio
Newcastle University Business School
The Co-productions of Knowledge . 2012

2. MOTIVATIONS
 Increment of new users and new Social Network Sites (SNS)
 Investment on SNS related start-ups (Arthur,2012)
 i.e. Facebook bought Instragram for $1.000.000
 Who is next? Pinterest, Spotify, Path?
 Trend related with personalization/customization features of
SNS: i.e. Close friends in FB, circles in Google + or promoted
post and twits.
 Uncertainty about success likelihood of SNS initiatives
 Previous research consider all SNS in a single category to find
patterns, but ignoring the differences can be dangerous
(Wilson et al. 2012).
Are we in a SNS bubble similar to the “.com” in
the early 2000‟s?

3. WEB 2.0
 Web 2.0 as a platform. (O'Reilly, 2005)
 Creation of communities based on users continued interaction
 “Is about „transforming monologue (one-to-many) into dialog
(many-to-many)‟ ” (Hansen et al., 2010, P. 12)
Online vs Offline communities Attributes
 Aspatial  Purpose
 Asynchronous  Place: chat, SNS, virtual world, etc
 Acorporal  Platform: Synchronous, non-
 Bandwidth synchronous
 Astigmatic  Population: (1) small group, (2)
 Anonymous
network (3) publics
(Smith, 1992)  Profit model
(Porter, 2004):

4. SOCIAL NETWORK SITES (SNS)
 Social Network is a set of nodes (can be people,
organizations, enterprises) connected through a series of ties,
generating patterns (Wellman, 2003).
 Focus on structural issues Social Network Analysis (SNA),
Divorce between sociological
meaning and computer science
 Boyd and Ellison (2008) defines a Social Network Site as
meaning (Quan,2009)
 “Web-based services that allow individuals to
 Construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system
 Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection
 View and traverse their list of connections and those made by
others within the system”.

5. NICHE SNS
 Contrast between general purpose and niche SNS
(Boyd and Ellison, 2008; Goldbeck,2007; Quan,2009;
Hansen et al. 2010),
 Research consider all SNS in a single category to find
patterns, but ignoring the differences can be dangerous
(Wilson et al. 2012)
 Niche SNS looks to narrow audiences through the focus
on
 Characteristics of the population: aSmallworld or Beautiful
people
 Activities: Coachsurfing and wayn
 Identity: Blackplanet and Cafemom
 Affiliations: Mychurch
 Dependency: Standalone or secondary feature in a website
(Goldbeck,2007; Quan,2009)

6. RESEARCH IN SNS
 Structural approach dominance
 Try to explain and predict the interaction between
network members, based on patterns found in the ties
(Oinas-Kukkonen et al., 2010). i.e. Homophily and
Triadic closure
 Focus:
 General-purpose SNS:
 large data available
 public character of the information*
 Comparison of the network characteristics(structural
and operational approach)
 Take all networks as if they were from same category
regardless the size and /or purpose

7. RESEARCH AIMS
 Understand why a user would prefer to join an
independent Niche SNS over a general purpose
group.
 What are the main factors that drive a user to join an
independent niche SNS?
 Independent vs Dependent

8. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY
 Highly used to understand users‟ choices (Lee, et al
2009 )
 Assumptions:
 a) Communication behaviour is goal-directed, purposive, and
motivated,
 b) people select media,
 c) many factors guide our media selection,
 d) media compete with other channels for messages
 e) people are typically more influential than media

9. GRATIFICATIONS
Socialising Information seeking
Networking Social support Information sharing and seeking
Privacy and Innovativenes
Identity Learning
security s
Social Network
Sites Uses and
Gratifications
Entertainment Convenience
Pleasurable way to spend time Covenience Market
Boredom relief Channel use profile
Figure 1 SNS Uses and Gratifications

10. NICHE THEORY
 Interest in explaining “how organisms that consume
similar resources and perform similar functions in
an environment compete and coexist” (Feaster,
2009, P.967).
 Dimmick (1993) propose an adaptation of the
biological formulas, following the Hutchinson
approach of n-dimensions, in which the factors
identified trough factor analysis become the
resources that the species will be competing for.

11. MEASURES
 Niche breadth measures the degree of
specialization of a niche regarding the dimension or
gratifications that fulfil. A general medium can fulfil a
wide range of dimensions, whereas a specialist will
fulfil a narrow spectrum (Dimmick et al., 2000;
Nyland, 2007).
 Niche overlap measures the similarity in the
resources used. Hence, a big overlap means that
the populations are competing for the same
resources.
 Niche superiority as its name indicates, will
measure which media is superior to the other
regarding the dimensions considered by media.