A Comparison of Facebook and MySpace
Trust is defined in (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman, 1995) as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of
another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of
the ability to monitor or control that other party” (p. 712). For face to face, trust is a critical determinant of sharing
information and developing new relationships (Fukuyama, 1995, Lewis and Weigert, 1985). Trust is also important for
successful online interactions (Coppola, Hiltz, and Rotter, 2004, Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1998, Meyerson, 1996, Piccoli and
Ives, 2003).
Electronic commerce research has found trust to be strongly related to information disclosure (Metzger, 2004). Trust is also a
central component of social exchange theory (Roloff, 1981). Social exchange theory presents a cost benefit analysis with
respect to social interaction. If the exchange is perceived to be beneficial, then the individual is likely to enter into an
exchange relationship. Trust is believed to be used in the calculation of perceived cost. High trust would lead to a perception
of low cost, and vice versa. Studies of interpersonal exchange situations confirm that trust is a precondition for selfdisclosure,
because it reduces perceived risks involved in revealing private information (Metzger, 2004).
Millions of people have joined social networking sites, adding profiles that reveal personal information. The reputations of
social networking sites has been diminished by a number of incidents publicized by the news media (Chiaramonte and
Martinez, 2006, Hass, 2006, Mintz, 2005, Read, 2006). Is it possible to join a network of millions of people and be able to
trust all of them? This does not seem realistic. Since people are obviously joining networks and revealing information, what
role does trust play in the use of social networking sites?
Privacy within social networking sites is often not expected or is undefined (Dwyer, 2007). Social networking sites record all
interactions, and retain them for potential use in social data mining. Offline, most social transactions leave behind no trace.
This lack of a record is a passive enabler of social privacy (Lessig, 1998). Therefore these sites need explicit policies and data
protection mechanisms in order to deliver the same level of social privacy found offline. Since online social privacy is harder
to guarantee, does a higher level of concern for internet privacy affect the use of social networking sites?
Studies of the first popular social networking site, Friendster, (boyd, 2004, boyd, 2006, boyd and Heer, 2006, Donath and
boyd, 2004) describe how members create their profile with the intention of communicating news about themselves to others.
Boyd, using an ethnographic approach, reveals the possibility of unintended consequences. As in other social networking
sites, Friendster members create a profile and make public links to others. What if there is something about your friend’s
page that might cause embarrassment if viewed out of context? Although members can control what appears on their profile,
they cannot control what appears on a friend’s profile. Crude pictures on a friend’s profile caused concern for a teacher when
her students asked to ‘friend’ her. This placed her in an awkward position, because allowing students access to her profile
would also allow them to view her friends, who she knew to have risqué pictures on their profile (boyd, 2004). This incident
demonstrates that concerns raised by navigating issues of privacy and trust were apparent in the first scholarly articles on
social networking sites.
Facebook, a social networking site that began with a focus on colleges and universities, but now includes high schools and
other organizations, has been studied by (Acquisti and Gross, 2006, Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield, 2007, Stutzman, 2006).
These studies have collected profile information from Facebook through the use of a web crawler, and through surveys of
members. They show that Facebook members reveal a lot of information about themselves, and are not very aware of privacy
options or who can actually view their profile (Acquisti and Gross, 2006).
Correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationships among the constructs presented in the Privacy Trust model
(Figure 1). Appendix 1 presents the results of this analysis. The dependent variables, information sharing and development of
new relationships are presented in the rows. For each independent variable, results for Facebook and MySpace are presented
separately, and also combined. The three independent variables are Internet Privacy Concern, Trust in the social networking
site, and Trust in other members. The two measures related to trust in other members are listed separately because they did
not load high enough.
Internet privacy concern relates to information sharing for only one item: instant messenger screen name. The negative
correlation coefficients indicate the greater the level of privacy concern, the less likely that subjects will share their screen
name. This is true for both social networking sites. This result emphasizes the importance of instant messenger as a personal
communications channel for these subjects. With regard to development of new relationships within Facebook, internet
privacy relates to the use of e-mail as a means of making contact with new friends (.248*).
Moving to the second independent variable, trust in the social networking site relates to sharing of home town location for
MySpace. This coefficient is the second highest result (.401**). Trust in the site also is correlated with sharing of email
address (for combined totals, .183*) and sharing cell phone number for Facebook (.258*).
Regarding the influence of trust in the site on the development of new relationships, remember that trust in Facebook was
found to be significantly higher than the trust in MySpace (F ratio = 4.511, p = .036). For Facebook subjects, trust in the site
relates to meeting face to face (.263*) as well as making contact via instant messenger (.328**). There are no significant
correlations between trust in the site and development of new relationships for MySpace subjects. This suggests the existence
of a mediating factor in MySpace that blunts the importance of trust with regard to developing new relationships.
For the third independent variable, trust in other members is captured through two measures. The measure of perception of
whether others’ profiles are exaggerated has only one significant result, sharing of real name (-.186*). Concern over being
embarrassed by the posting of others has a much stronger influence in MySpace compared to Facebook. The highest result in
the table is the coefficient for sharing relationship status (-.458**) for MySpace. The greater the concerns for embarrassment,
the less likely subjects were to share their relationship status. This measure is also related to sharing email address for
MySpace subjects (.328*), and for the combined totals (.256**). Concern for embarrassment is only related to the
development of new relationships using email for MySpace members (.298*).
These correlations show surprising and confusing results. In general, the correlation coefficients are low. This makes it
difficult to understand the role of privacy and trust within social networking sites. However, significant findings were found
for each independent variable. The influence of trust in the site is more apparent in the behavior of Facebook subjects when it
comes to development of new relationships, even though there is less trust in MySpace along with more reports of developing
new relationships. Although the privacy scale has strong reliability, there is little evidence of influence of privacy concern on
information sharing, with the exception of subjects’ screen name.
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