Maintaining the Instant Connection - Social Media Practices of Smartphone Users

In the last few years, using social media via mobile phone applications has become increasingly common. However, there are only few studies exploring people’s mobile application usage behavior. In order to understand users’ mobile social media practices in the context of everyday life, 30 owners of high-end smartphones were interviewed for this study. The context of their mobile SNS use cases was studied through diaries kept by 15 of the participants. The results show that mobile social networking is typically about briefly checking the latest updates and news, most often while in transit and when immersive use of the internet is not possible. Also, there are more browsing activities on the mobile phone than content creation, which is better done with PC. In the use of social media, immediate access to the most interesting content, such as photos, status updates and news, is highly valued; in this respect, the mobile phone adds value to the use of social media by enabling access to it in a great variety of situations and locations. As a practical result, we present design implications for mobile SNS applications and point out that there is currently a lack of features for effective selection, storing and filtering of content produced through the various social media sites.