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Facebook has been smacked down. The Russian special way of SNSs: Vkontakte as a case study

Nowadays, Facebook is the standard in the social network world but not in Russia and nearby countries. Here, Vkontakte, the domestic social network service (SNS), dominates. What are the reasons for this success of the regional SNS and the failure of the global giant? We are going to answer this research question while we empirically studied both social network services, Facebook as well as Vkontakte, among Russian users. This investigation applies the Information Service Evaluation (ISE) model in terms of perceived information system quality and the systems acceptance of both SNSs. The ISE model is a modified version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the DeLone and McLean model as well as the Jennex and Olfman model. There are a lot of studies that use these true „classics,” but no research has evaluated these SNSs and their acceptance in this context. The theoretical framework of our study is the ISE model, because it entails all aspects of the other models and adds some crucial aspects as e.g. impact and diffusion (including network effects). Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to explore the reasons of success or failure of the SNSs, Facebook and Vkontakte, and the perception of their quality defined among Russian users. The evaluation of both SNSs ultimately results in a discovery of some useful factors for the following marketing strategy on the Russian SNSs´ market. We found out that Vkontakte is perceived as more useful than Facebook, is much more trustworthy, and more enjoyable to use. Furthermore, the study highlights that it seems to be impossible to set up another SNS on the Russian network market nowadays.

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