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Purpose No studies in the extant literature have explored the role of media richness, i.e., the ability of media to enhance understanding among communication partners in a timely manner, in determining customer loyalty to mobile instant messaging (MIM). Grounded in media richness theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how media richness influences customer perceived values, consequently contributing to customer loyalty to MIM.Design/methodology/approach Collecting data by an online survey, the authors apply partial least square procedures for hypothesis testing.Findings The authors obtain the following findings: multiple cues are positively related to functional value; immediate feedback is positively related to social value; personal focus is positively related to self-expressive value; language variety is positively related to all the above values that lead to user loyalty; and language variety has the strongest effect on user loyalty to MIM.Originality/value A first attempt to examine the impact of media richness on user loyalty to MIM, this study provides insights for MIM service providers to make decisions to build loyal user bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - User-generated media (UGM) like Youlube, MySpace, and Wikipedia have become tremendously popular over the last few years. The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical framework for explaining the appeal of UGM. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is mainly theoretical due to a relative lack of empirical evidence. After an introduction on the emergence of UGM, this paper investigates in detail how and why people use UGM, and what factors make UGM particularly appealing, through a uses and gratifications perspective. Finally, the key elements of this study are summarized and the future research directions about UGM are discussed. Findings - This paper argues that individuals take with UGM in different ways for different purposes: they consume contents for fulfilling their information, entertainment, and mood management needs; they participate through interacting with the content as well as with other users for enhancing social connections and virtual communities; and they produce their own contents for self-expression and self-actualization. These three usages are separate analytically but interdependent in reality. This paper proposes a model to describe such interdependence. Furthermore, it argues that two usability attributes of UGM, "easy to use" and "let users control," enable people to perform the aforementioned activities efficiently so that people can derive greater gratification from their UGM use. Originality/value - UGM are an extremely important topic in new media scholarship, and this study represents the first step toward understanding the appeal of UGM in an integrated way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — To provide an empirically based analysis and evaluation of the existing and possible future evolution of Internet business models within the digital content market, focusing particularly on the possibilities for cooperation and cooperation within this market-space. Design/methodology/approach — The paper is based on a three-year study of the European online news and online music sectors, comprising a set of preliminary, scene-setting case studies of a number of major players within the European online news and music sectors; a detailed, two-stage survey made up of online questionnaires and face-to-face interviews; and a small number of in-depth case studies. Findings — Provides a discussion of the changes taking place in the online news and music sectors, the evolution of the business models within them, the driving forces we have identified, and finally some predictions about what the future may hold for both these sectors. Research limitations/implications — The research is indicative, rather than general — being centred on European participants in two sectors of the digital content market-space in the period between May 2003 and August 2004. Practical implications — A rich evaluation of these two fast-moving digital content sectors, providing empirically based insights into the ways in which they are evolving and changing and into parallels with other, similar sectors of the digital content market. Originality/value — This paper is the first major empirical evaluation of the digital content market-space and offers practical assistance, as well as new theoretical insights on e-business model evolution in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Creative performance relies on the capability of developing and presenting an original concept or idea, and the collaborative production of creative content which enhances feeling of connection with others and formation of strong community. The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of work performance containing four dimensions (capacity, opportunities, willingness, and performance) to investigate how the capabilities of social network sites enhance user creative performance through collective social capital and information capital (opportunities) for and individual habit of use (willingness) of the user to engage in social learning process. Design/methodology/approach – Many measurement items are adapted from the literature, except those measuring the constructs of social media capabilities (i.e. transmission velocity (TV), parallelism, symbol sets, rehearsability, and reprocessability) and user creative performance. The study uses survey method to collect data from social media network (SMN) users in Taiwan. Facebook is chosen as the source because it is the most prevalent and sophisticated social media platform that provides a home for users to interact and communicate. Structural equation modeling with partial least square is used to analyze the usable data collected from 533 Facebook users. Findings – The results show that the constructs are significantly and positively correlated, meaning that social media capabilities enable social capital, information capital, and habit of use to improve user creative performance in SMNs. Three out of five social media capabilities (i.e. TV, parallelism, and rehearsability) are identified as the key enablers. Research limitations/implications – Because of the sampled surveyed subjects and the single research method, there are some limitations in this study. The research results may lack generalizability that should be taken into account when they are interpreted. The authors encourage researchers to test the proposed theoretical model further with additional subjects, variables, and linkages. Practical implications – The findings of this research shed light for managers of SMN platforms on how to manage the platforms more effectively. A healthy SMN platform must implement at least these three media capabilities: the functions of news feed (i.e. TV), chat (i.e. parallelism), edit (i.e. rehearsability), in order to sustain its service. Social implications – This study confirmed that user creative performance can be increased in various ways through social capital, information capital, and habit of use. Company management should use SMNs (e.g. Facebook or Twitter) to enable employees to interact and exchange ideas and promote “coopetition” among employees across the company. If the organizational culture supports free expression of ideas and sharing of opinions, the development and robustness of group creativity can be enhanced, leading to higher competitive advantage for a company against its competitors. Originality/value – Past studies related to individual creativity have mostly discussed it as a personality trait or talent; yet, personality trait or talent is implicit until it is shown by one’s behavior. Thus, for the collective performance of user creativity on SMNs, the authors elicit individual creativity through the creative performance manifested by user behavior. Furthermore, the authors confirm that social capital, information capital, and habit of use are the critical antecedents of user creative performance, and that the five social media capabilities are the enablers of social capital, information capital, and habit of use on SMNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - A layout problem may deal with the assignment and arrangement of buildings in a green field, location and/or relocation of machines/departments in manufacturing facilities, and so on. If multi-periods are considered, the problem is called a dynamic layout problem in manufacturing environments. Designing web pages, especially internet newspaper layouts, might also be considered dynamic layout problems. This study aims to introduce a layout procedure for the front page of internet newspapers. Design/methodology/approach - The news contents are ranked and selected based on their characteristic attributes. Then they are assigned to locations on dynamic content area of the front page. Layout optimization is made by use of Clonal Selection Algorithm (CSA). Finally, an illustrative example is provided and concepts for real life applications are discussed. The proposed method is based on CSA, which is a nature-inspired technique. The novel heuristic is applied to a simulated system to depict how the news content layouts can be optimized in dynamic environments. Findings - The capacity for addition of new news contents and removal of the old turns the internet newspaper environment into a dynamic structure. A systematic layout method for internet newspapers is developed to fill the gap. Practical implications - The results are encouraging for real life applications of internet newspapers. The study has also introduced a new site for the manufacturing area. In the classic dynamic layout model, the machine locations and the number of available machines are assumed to be fixed. But the concept of introducing/removing news contents can be adapted to the machines at the manufacturing facilities. Originality/value - The paper's value lies in showing that the front page layout is not considered to optimize the locations of the articles. Also, the proposed algorithm is applied to solve these kinds of problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]