About 35% of online social network users belong to more than one networking platform such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The interplay among these various social networking platforms implies that several sources may induce interrelationships among the platforms. To understand such relationships, the authors propose an integrated visit model that accommodates communicating activities across social network platforms and test the model using data from two social network games that have considerable overlap among network members. The model captures various sources of dependencies across network platforms, including coincidental visitation, correlated heterogeneity and experience spillover across network platforms. More important, the model discovers a new source of dependencies that stems from communications with common network members overlapping in different network platforms. The model finds that the spillover effects are asymmetric across networks. The simulation study provides managerial implications for organizations attempting to target valuable users and allocate resources across multiple network platforms.

• Hwang Kim(Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
• Vithala R. Rao(Cornell University, USA)