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Many popular social network sites (SNSs) provide the post-syncing functionality, which allows users to synchronize posts automatically among different SNSs. Nowadays there exists divergence on this functionality from the view of sink SNS. The key to solving this problem is to understand the characteristics of users' post-syncing practice and goals and evaluate whether they are consistent with an SNS's norms, cultures, and goals. However, studying and understanding the characteristics of post-syncing practice and goal are challenging tasks as a result of the difficulty of data sampling and the complexity of post-syncing behavior. In this article, we focus on investigating this question by quantitative analysis in combination with qualitative analysis. In the quantitative study, by utilizing 211,233 synced-posts sampled from Weibo, we aim to investigate characteristics of post-syncing from three perspectives: user, content, and goal. The results suggest that post-syncing plays an important role in exhibiting one's current activities, creations, and skills as well as advertisements but involves a risk of exhibiting personal sensitive profiles. To understand the results, we present an interview-based qualitative study based on thematic analysis. It indicates that the publicity, urgency, and remarkableness of contents and differences of social affordances and social circles between sink SNS and source SNS as well as the one-time consent of post-syncing authentication jointly account for the major role of post-syncing. Based on these results, we propose insights for post-syncing functionality's adoption, design, and promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of six popular social networking sites (SNSs)—Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest—in a high school setting. Students, teachers, and administrators were interviewed to learn how they use these SNSs to support a variety of functions in the school setting, including professional development, classroom learning, self-directed learning, and socializing. Participants also were asked about how they use SNSs more generally and points of overlap between personal and school-related uses. Findings show that although instructional use is low, SNSs nonetheless have a pervasive presence in the school. Being highly connected has both advantages and disadvantages for students and teachers alike. For individuals with poor social connections, the heavy use of SNSs can result in greater disconnection from school-related information and social circles. Implications show opportunities for selecting classroom learning tools, developing digital literacy and citizenship curricula, and supporting all members of the school community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among young people's online activities, a significant portion involves social networking and communication. The additional social space afforded by the Internet has extended the way young people relate to their surrounding world. This study examined how young people adapt to the networked digital space. Semistructured interviews with adolescents (twelve to eighteen years old) in South Korea and Australia revealed that new norms of social interaction are constantly created and negotiated. First, online participants carefully curate what can be seen and what should be hidden from others. Knowing the global and permanent nature of digital traces, users are mindful of what they post and how they interact online. Second, the continuous presence online results in rapid cycles of interactions, pressuring network members to respond immediately. Online interactions are quickly replaced by new ones, creating a sense of ephemerality. Third, there is a close tethering of the online to the offline world. Young people constantly engage in multiple and simultaneous online social interactions while dipping in and out of their physical realities. The tension between permanency and ephemerality leads online participants to question the authenticity of the partial reality that is depicted online and adds complexity to the norms of social interaction. Fear of missing out (FOMO) existed in both groups of adolescents and was reflected in how frequently they engaged in online interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the blooming of online social networks (OSNs), a user often holds accounts on multiple sites. In this article, we study the emerging "cross-site linking" function available on mainstream OSN services including Foursquare, Quora, and Pinterest. We first conduct a data-driven analysis on crawled profiles and social connections of all 61.39 million Foursquare users to obtain a thorough understanding of this function. Our analysis has shown that the cross-site linking function is adopted by 57.10% of all Foursquare users, and the users who have enabled this function are more active than others. We also find that the enablement of cross-site linking might lead to privacy risks. Based on cross-site links between Foursquare and external OSN sites, we formulate cross-site information aggregation as a problem that uses cross-site links to stitch together site-local information fields for OSN users. Using large datasets collected from Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter, we demonstrate the usefulness and the challenges of cross-site information aggregation. In addition to the measurements, we carry out a survey collecting detailed user feedback on cross-site linking. This survey studies why people choose to or not to enable cross-site linking, as well as the motivation and concerns of enabling this function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]