• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.45-63
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• 2009

China has the largest number of the user of web 2.0 such as messengers and blogs, as of 2008 year. Chinese Internet digital market will grow from $85 billion in 2007 to $264 billion in 2015. The importance of Chinese Internet business is increasing, because of its size and growth potential. This research is focused on following two questions. First, what are the major characteristics of social networking services in China? In order to find out the answer about this question, the case study on Tencent QQ and Sina Poco, the most representative social networking services company in China, was done. And the reason of the use of social networking services, their contents, and the attitude toward the paid service were identified. Second, what are the major factors influencing the use of social networking services in China. User participation, network effect, usefulness, and system quality were inferred as the factors influencing the use. These factors were based on motivation theory, technology acceptance model, and the related research papers. This research model was proved by data analysis using Partial Least Square. As results, the use of social networking services was influenced by usefulness, network effect, user participation, and system quality. But social influence was not significant of the use of social networking services.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.315-325
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• 2021

The value and importance of Gamification has intensified as the way Gamification is applied to social networking applications has added to users' interest and involvement to the product. Gamification entails the adoption of gaming techniques and modes of thinking in non-gaming domains to elicit user engagement. To this end, the paper draws on Gamification's analytical model, Octalysis, with the aim of identifying user loyalty of the three major Chinese social networking applications and extracting their characteristics. In this regard, the first task in the advancement of the study is to establish an understanding of the components and characteristics of Gamification within the context of available examples. Next, a questionnaire survey covering China's three dominant social applications, WeChat, QQ, and Xiaohongshu, is administered and their user loyalty is examined through Octalysis's eight analytical frameworks. By virtue of analysis, the results demonstrate that the three elements of game mechanics, Point, Badge, and Leadboard, which are external to the game, fail to sustain the user loyalty, but are merely a means to an end. Only by including a combination of social application features, contents and user needs can Gamification considerations be maximized to ensure that users are subjectively engaged with the product.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.215-227
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• 2017

The development of information technology are leading to the rapid evolution of SNS (Social Networking Services) in various directions and industries. Initially, SNS have been used as the form of networking between user's groups. Currently SNS has been developed towards multiple purposes and platforms such as the promotion and the advertising of a company. There are many SNSs including QQ, Weibo, and Wechat and so on in China. However, the use of companies in terms of advertising and information sharing with the customers do not meet the trend in China. Especially, there were little researches for Chinese travel agencies how to utilize SNS for attracting new customers and making them contribute to the firm's performance. In this study, we try to investigate the impact of the firm's characteristics and the usage of SNS on the performance of Chinese travel agencies. Based on Top 100 China travel agencies in 2009, we analyzed the relationships between firm's characteristics and the usage of SNS, and firm's performances in 2013. We expect that our study can contribute to the increasing academic and practical needs on the empirical evidence of the impacts of the SNS utilizations on the firm's performance.