Melbourne, June 22: Whether you're male or female
would determine which Facebook applications you find cool, for
a new study has revealed that the sexes use the popular social
networking site differently.
Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology
have found that while women prefer applications which they can
express themselves through, men choose ones they can compete
against others with.
In fact, they have based their findings on an analysis
of the value of applications, such as 'Scrabble', 'Mousehunt'
and 'Superpoke', which allow people to interact with social
networking sites and other users.
Lead researcher Rebekah Russell-Bennett said when it
came to uncovering what made social networking applications
successful, it seemed women wanted to express themselves,
while men enjoyed the thrill of social competition.
"Facebook users want to possess and share cool
applications that enhance their standing within their network
of friends. For women this is about self-expression, for men
it is about who the best.
"The study found value is measured for women
according to the ability of the application to facilitate
self-expression of interests, values or personality, and for
men according to the ability to facilitate competition and
comparison. Both want novelty and rarity," she said.
According to the researchers, applications were also
considered cool when they allowed self-categorisation such as
discovering which movie star you are, applications which
change daily or regularly, applications which allow high
levels of interactivity such as scrabble or bowling, and
applications which were exclusive and rare.
The study was important because from a commercial
view, organisations were struggling to understand how to
develop a cool application and identify the features that
would encourage people to recommend cool applications to
friends, the researchers said.
"Popular applications can attract tens of millions
of views and uses per month, and given that applications are
relatively cheap to develop and are distributed virtually
cost-free, this makes them an attractive substitute to
traditional advertising," Russell-Bennett said.
Bureau Report
First Published: Monday, June 22, 2009, 11:19