Essays on structural changes and value creations in social network economy with massive user participation

Abstract

Online social network services penetrate the various environments surrounding us and have a great impact not only on the lives of individuals but also on society as a whole, especially on firm activities and market values. However, understanding of the growth of online social networks and understanding of social influences on the information dissemination through individual participation in online social networks is still limited. This study explores three important research topics: How helpful is application programming interfaces (APIs) adoption to the growth of incumbent and emerging social networks? Is it possible to predict long-run IPO performance through the information people send and receive on online social networks? Finally, do user-generated contents on online social networks in various languages affect the stock markets? I analyzed the online social network usage indicator data for 10 years and over 1.8 billion conversations generated by user of social networks, and conducted empirical analyses on the research topic. Through this study, I found that: through theory building, the API adoption helped to form small groups in online social networks, and more users were joined through group formation, and the participation of users in social networks increased. By analyzing the 1.8 billion data from online social networks, firms that had positive conversations with people showed higher returns from a long-term perspective. Analyzing the same social network conversation data, listed firms with overseas activities confirmed that the more the foreign language users talk, the more the stock trading volume increases.