What Are You Working On? Status Message Q&A in an Enterprise SNS

Abstract

Social networking services (SNS) have been deployed within enterprises to encourage informal social interactions and information sharing. As such, users have turned to the status message functionality in a SNS for social information seeking by employing it as a medium for question asking. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study observing emergent question and answer (Q&A) behaviors in an enterprise SNS and then describe user motivations in employing this medium for social information seeking. We report data describing the types and topics of questions asked within the workplace and the prevalence of questions and responses within this system. Results suggest that users choose status message Q&A for non-urgent information seeking needs and perceive question asking as a way to elicit social support from their professional networks.