Social Networking Sites: Segmenting Young Users on Motivations Taylors Business Review Vol. 3 Issue 2, August 2013 1 Social Networking Sites: Segmenting Young Users on Motivations Sathyaprakash Balaji Makam Taylors University, Malaysia Abstract: The paper examines motivations for social networking sites (SNS) among young adult users. Two studies were conducted to examine the study objectives. In the qualitative phase, the various motivations for use of SNS were identified. In the quantitative phase, responses collected from 308 young users of social networking sites were analysed using factor analysis and cluster analysis. Cluster analysis on the six motivations revealed four distinct clusters namely socialisers, self-presenters, passive observers and info-seekers. The implications of the study results are presented. Key words: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX JEL classification: XXXXXXX 1. INTRODUCTION Among the social media applications, social networking sites (SNS) have grown to be ubiquitous in the past few years. SNS represent a form of virtual community that allows people to generate and exchange content or information with others. These are novel web-based formats that support both information exchange (one- to-many) and social interaction (many-to-many). SNS allow users to manage their existing relationships and build new relationships (including complete strangers) beyond the geographical and social proximity. 1 The social networking sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ have become a mass phenomenon and a key socialisation force. People use SNS to build their profiles, coordinate their interpersonal exchanges, explore their relationships and share relevant artifacts (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Pempek, Yermolayeva & Calvert, 2009; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). In 2011, ComScore reported that the total unique users of social networking sites reached 1.3 billion users worldwide, a growth of more than 40 % from year 2010. Vol X Issue X, XXXXXX 2013 pp. XX-XX ISSN: 2232-0172 A Contemporary Business Journal Correspondence: M.S. Balaji, Taylors Business School, Taylors University, No 1, Jalan Taylors, 47500 Selangor Malaysia. Email: sathyaprakashbalaji.makam@taylors.edu.my 3 SocialnetworkingSites(edSP) (RV)rev2.pmd 11/11/2013, 12:06 PM 1