Appropriateness of search engines, social networks, and directly approaching friends to satisfy information needs

One form of social search is to integrate one's social network in the search process by querying friends, leading to more subjective but also highly individualized answers. Previous studies analyzed users' social search behavior using (broadcasted) status messages on social networking platforms to communicate information needs (Status Message Question Asking, SMQA) and revealed a limited willingness of information seekers to use SMQA when comparing it to traditional search engines. We describe the results of a survey with 112 participants and show that directly approaching well chosen friends is considered more attractive and is associated with higher expectations in terms of response quality than SMQA. Our findings suggest that users anticipate quality improvements gained from forwarding queries especially for certain content types of information needs and that response time is an important factor.

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