State of the (net)work address Developing criteria for applying social networking to the work environment.
In an increasingly faster paced innovative world, maintaining the ability to innovate in spite of an aging work force will become every company's strongest leverage for success. Tapping the latent knowledge resources and creativity of overlooked employees and persisting crucial information for business conduct are promising results for social networking sites (SNS) in a working context. Usability and usefulness are exponential factors in creating a successful SNS. In order to make a SNS usable for a heterogeneous user group, analyses of user diversity in regard to social media need to be done. Furthermore differences in communication medium and frequency in regard to age, content, hierarchy position, departmental thresholds and company size need to be analyzed. For analysis purposes both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied. Strong effects of age and communication content were found in survey with 194 participants.
Human Computer Interaction Center, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, 52062 Aachen, Germany. calero-valdez@humtec.rwth-aachen.de
André Calero
AC
Valdez
Anne Kathrin
AK
Schaar
Martina
M
Ziefle
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D061108:Social Media / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D060756:Social Networking; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D017132:Workplace; D055815:Young Adult