How to get proper profiles? A psychological perspective on social networking sites

Abstract

Research on transactive memory systems has shown the importance of knowledge about who knows what. Going beyond the issue of work group settings, the article underlines the importance of such knowledge for finding one's way through today's knowledge society. We discuss how social networking sites can be used to manage individual knowledge networks. Therefore, we describe characteristics of social networking sites resulting in the conclusion that user profiles serve as a base for an external transactive memory system. Furthermore, we discuss guiding propositions for self-presentation in user profiles that could promote the establishment of an useful external transactive memory system. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.