It's all 'about you': diversity in online profiles

User profiles on today's social networking sites support only a small set of predefined questions. We report on an alternative way for users to richly describe themselves, by entering not only responses, but their own questions as well. Data from 10 months of usage shows that users of a social networking site created thousands of diverse questions and reused existing questions from other users. Our findings suggest that those with highly diverse user profiles have a higher number of friends. ACM Classification Keywords H5.3. Group and Organization Interfaces: Collaborative computing, Evaluation/methodology, Web-based interaction General Terms Human Factors, Measurement, Design. Author Keywords User profiles, social networking, self description, impression formation, self expression, reuse

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CSCW
• Authors: Casey Dugan, Werner Geyer, Michael J. Muller, Joan Morris DiMicco, Beth Brownholtz, David R. Millen
• Keywords: CSCW 2008, Social Networking, Social Networking Site, Social Sciences, User Profiles