ESCP Europe

Langue

English

Publication year

01/01/2018

The worldwide proliferation of social network services necessitates a move beyond studying the adoption of any single social network service. However, little research has discussed the competition between different social network services. Taking the uses-and-gratification perspective, this study explores the potential displacement effect between two most popular social network services in China: WeChat and Weibo. Adopting both the media-centric and user-centric approaches, we attempted to explain the displacement effect by examining gratification-opportunities of and gratifications-obtained from WeChat and Weibo respectively. Based on an online survey (N = 395), we found that WeChat was displacing Weibo among young users. The growing preference on WeChat was driven by its instant messaging as gratification opportunity and sociability, entertainment and peer approval as gratifications obtained. Our analysis meanwhile reveals that the user-centered approach is more effective in explaining the displacement between similar social network services in competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]