International users’ experience of social media: A comparison between facebook and wechat

Abstract

Social media are becoming more and more popular all around the world, but it remains unclear whether people have different user behaviors in different social media. WeChat and Facebook assist international users in China to communicate with their families and friends from different countries. We conducted the comparative study that examined international users’ behaviors in WeChat and Facebook. The data were collected from 98 international users who used both WeChat and Facebook through questionnaire surveys. We mainly compared the satisfaction, trust and usage in different social media. The comparative analysis showed that Facebook was more like a news application, while WeChat was more like a communication tool for international users living in China. The results revealed that international users had higher satisfaction levels of voice call, video call, voice message, and emoji/sticker in WeChat, while they had higher satisfaction levels of posting and accessing news in Facebook. International users relied more on WeChat during their stay in China. Although international users used Facebook and WeChat frequently, they did not fully trust them. We also gathered some information about their reasons to use or not to use functions of social media. These findings would help designers have a deeper understanding of international users and help social media companies to globalize their products.