Facebook me: collective self-esteem, need to belong, and internet self-efficacy as predictors of the iGeneration's attitudes toward social networking sites
Harsha GangadharbatlaTexas Tech University
INTRODUCTION
User-generated content sites provide platforms for information sharing, video sharing, photo sharing, and blogging. Often referred to as Web 2.0, these sites are expected to generated $4.3 billion by 2011, more than four times what U.S. user-generated content sites generated in 2007 when more than 70 million U.S. Internet users created content online (eMarketer 2006).
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, user-generated content sites constitute 5 out of top 10 fastest growing Web brands (Neilsen...