Docs.com: Social File Sharing in Facebook

Abstract

Social networking sites provide a unique opportunity for users to engage in broadcast online file sharing and collaboration. In this study we examine the usage of Docs.com, which integrates Microsoft Office web documents with Facebook. In reviewing the content of Docs.com documents, we found they were equally created and shared for work, personal productivity, and play. Users actively employed relationship levels in their Facebook networks to define access to their documents. However, we also found the most viewed documents were those shared to the entire public, with Facebook notifications driving most of the traffic to these public documents. Finally, through a factor analysis of user activity four primary types of usage emerged – sharing, creating, collaborating, and consuming. Those who created and collaborated around documents had higher levels of engagement than those who just shared or consumed documents, interacting with more documents and returning on more unique days.