A UK-based online questionnaire investigating aspects of usage of user-generated media (UGM), such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, attracted 587 participants. Results show a high degree of engagement with social networking media such as Facebook, and a significant engagement with other media such as professional media, microblogs and blogs. Participants who experience information overload are those who engage less frequently with the media, rather than those who have fewer posts to read. Professional users show different behaviours to social users. Microbloggers complain of information overload to the greatest extent. Two thirds of Twitter-users have felt that they receive too many posts, and over half of Twitter-users have felt the need for a tool to filter out the irrelevant posts. Generally speaking, participants express satisfaction with the media, though a significant minority express a range of concerns including information overload and privacy.
LinkedIn capitalises on its status as a permission-requiring social-graph medium in that it presents itself as a professional introductions service. The site encourages strictly professional information to be shared, and tends to attract older professionals @cite_0 . In their review of social and professional media in the workplace context, Skeels and Grudin @cite_0 find tension around privacy in social media use. However, they also report rapid adoption, as numerous benefits are found. They found, as will be echoed in our own findings, that users post more frequently to Facebook than LinkedIn, demonstrating a particular degree of attraction to that medium. Though users report great value to LinkedIn, they do not seem driven to visit the site so often. Our own investigation supports this observation; reasons for this will be explored later in the paper. LinkedIn usage seems limited to the professional context, whereas Twitter seems broadly undifferentiated in that regard, and a certain amount of Facebook usage will tend to be professional; for example, Facebook allows businesses to create pages on which they may publicise themselves.
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The use of social networking software by professionals is increasing dramatically. How it is used, whether it enhances or reduces productivity, and how enterprise-friendly design and use might evolve are open questions. We examine attitudes and behaviors in a large, technologically-savvy organization through a broad survey and thirty focused interviews. We find extensive social and work uses, with complex patterns that differ with software system and networker age. Tensions arise when use spans social groups and the organization's firewall. Although use is predominantly to support weak ties whose contribution to productivity can be difficult to prove, we anticipate rapid uptake of social networking technology by organizations.