The Role of Network Embeddedness Across Multiple Social Networks: Evidence from Mobile Social Network Games
(A2020-63308)

AUTHORS

Hwang Kim, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Vithala Rao, Cornell University

KEYWORDS

social networks; network embeddedness; network overlap

ABSTRACT

Firms managing multiple social network services (e.g., Facebook, Tencent, Zynga) need to understand user behaviors across these services to discover interdependencies among them. This article examines a new source of interdependence that stems from network embeddedness across multiple social network services. To do so, we develop a model of users’ visits that accommodates social influence through communication and test the model using data from two social gaming services with considerable overlap among network members. The study identifies four types of network embeddedness within and across network services and compares their social influence. We show that ignoring network embeddedness across networks may lead firms to target wrong user groups due to the biased social influences and offer an explanation on mixed findings for network embeddedness by previous literature. This study has implications for firms to effectively manage users’ engagement in multiple social network services.