Is ‘New’ Always ‘Nicer’? Examining the Influence of Innovation in Social Media

Abstract

With a view to enhance content creation and increase user engagement, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been experimenting with new innovative features. We investigate the effect of introducing one such innovative social media feature — the “story” on the communication between the profile owners and users through the primary social media channel – the “posts”. Grounding our arguments in the resource allocation and social penetration theories and employing a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference method, we examine how introduction of the innovative story feature on a popular social media platform influences (1) the frequency of profile owners’ information sharing through social media posts, and (2) the extent of follower engagement through feedback in terms of linking and commenting on the posts. Our results show that introduction of the story feature positively influences both. However, this influence is moderated by the cultural orientation of the situating social media community. We find that low-power-distance cultures, which value profile owners’ self-disclosure, exhibit a significant positive impact, whereas high-power-distance cultures exhibit no significant influence. We delineate the implications of our findings for both research and practice.