How to Make Friends in Social Network Service? A Comparison between Chinese and German

Abstract

Social network service is very popular all around the world. Global social network service assists Chinese users to have more friends from different countries. Friend-making on social network service is not systematically documented and reported for Chinese. Making friends in social network service and making friends in real life include similar activities such as invitation, knowledge sharing and communication. Almost everything users can do in real life can be done through internet. For example, in social network service E websites such as Facebook users can share a photo with their friends as they do in real life. The difference between making friends in social network service and in real life exits on the way how these activities are done. For example, in real life photo sharing is usually accompanied with a face-to-face talking while in social network service it is mainly the online comments on the photo. Therefore it is interesting to find if Chinese user behavior on social network service is consistent with that in real life.Thus it is necessary to design social network service with consideration of Chinese usage pattern. For example, as Chinese tend to have more virtual friend social network service websites can recommend. Social network website can use online activity such as “campus star” to require Chinese user to explore other’s home page or use “explore” button to have user randomly go to strangers’ homepage. More virtual communication style can be added to increase ease of use. For example voice and video message can be applied in social network service in addition to text message.The result indicates that the Chinese participants have more virtual friends than German participants while German users contact their friends more often in real life. There is no big difference between Chinese and German participants on communicating with their friends and sharing information. The result shed light on future research on Chinese friend-making behavior on social network service and user interface design for Chinese.