User churning behavior in social networks

Abstract: Abstract Background: With the rapid development of Internet and social network, some social networking sites as Renren.com have achieved breakthrough development, rapidly gathering and driving numerous users. However, with the advent of Web 3.0, the social networking has a new change. Many social websites as Renren.com was replaced by new social networking site and lost amounts of users. The popular social website Myspace losing more than 90% of users. These cases show that many social websites cannot avoid user churning problem. Purpose: The purpose is to understand user churning behavior in social networks while using Renren.com as a case. Method: The thesis is a descriptive-exploratory study with a mixed-methods. Base on my research purpose and research question, I decide to use mixed methods with both quantitative and qualitative data to provide a better understand of my research problem. By collecting data through questionnaires with closed ended questions and conduct an interview directly with 10 participants who has used Renren.com for 2-5 years and use social media networks very often. Conclusion: By analyzing empirical findings, a final summary was developed in regard to the research questions respectively, where some aspects are in accordance with the theoretical framework. To sum up, there are five reasons to answer the research questions, which are all identified from the participants’ perspective. Limitations: This thesis is only conducted by limited number of users who has used Renren.com and social networks for a long time, due to the time and access available. Thus, apart from the respondents, I cannot get the data from the all of users from Renren.com. Moreover, my research is from the perspective of user experience, and I cannot fully understand all the reasons of user churning. It might be operational issue or target issue from the website Keyword: social networks, user churning, Renren.com