What value do users derive from social networking applications?

This piece analyzes the kinds of social networking site applications that are the most popular and most recommended to friends. An application, such a minor tedious facet of a networking site, is further scrutinized here hence it is a cost-effective way to advertise. The media has experienced trouble connecting with Generation Y and such a generation mostly resides on social networking sites. The standard way of advertising on a networking site is fairly expensive, on the other hand creating an application to advertise is affordable since the distribution is basically free.

The label “cool” is more closely defined. It is the main characteristic of an application which determines whether or not an application will be recommended to others. In order to better understand the term “cool,” certain themes were produced. The features of popular applications have to deal with self-expression, competition/ comparison, and personality values. Females were more apt to engage in applications with self-expression value while males with competition value.

The main application values listed are emotional, social, altruistic, and functional. Emotional incorporates the senses such as that of laughter, romance, etc. The social value deals with the ability to share information with others, while the altruistic refers to helping the world, others, etc. Altruistic value is said to be the least evident. The functional value stresses that photos, music, and/ or other mediums can be incorporated. Amongst many of the other broken-down features, the ability for one to be creative, novel/uncommon, self-categorical, and waste time may trigger the application’s coolness.



The article depicts the applications that can discourage as well as encourage recommendations of an application to friends. For example the fact that something is very popular and common can encourage friend recommendations but at the same time it can make an application un-cool and discourage friend recommendations by being too much of a fad and less of a rarity. As mentioned, polar applications can also affect friend recommendations, for instance if the application promotes destructive emotions (anger, fatigue) than it won’t be recommended to friends as opposed to one that promotes positive emotions. Uni-directional effects are also depicted for example a cause-related application will be more so encouraged rather than discouraged.


Other than using a functional value application for incorporating music on my Facebook page, I am not one to engage in social networking site applications. Although I allocate time to exchange thoughts, status updates, and messages on social networking sites, I simply do not have much time to invest with applications and feel my friends are in the same boat. On the other hand, if the advertisement industry can effectively tap into the sites in which Generation Y mostly invests their time on, I do believe that this is an essential study hence many individuals do use applications. Despite the fact that functional value cannot stand alone, this study demonstrates that the functional and social values and/or functional and emotional values make up “cool” applications. An application apparently cannot appeal to all globally; the media industry’s main concern now is to determine what target audience they will be catering their application to.