Sticky Websites

How do websites like Facebook and Myspace get the users to stay on their site for a long time? To speak tongue-in-cheek, I think partly due to the very unintuitive interface they have! Do I see many raising eyebrows?Well, these sites are somewhat targeted towards the teenagers and young adults and I am sure they dont have a tough time browsing these sites.

Speaking on a more contemplative note, I think these sites are sticky owing to the very nature of its user base. Teenagers tend to stick to each other even offline.The feeling of belonging to a group and sharing everything with peers is a strong feeling in the teenage-young adult population.The advent of these social networking sites has made it easier for the teenagers/young adults to "share" without actually having to physically transport themselves.Moreover the thrill of using the latest and the "coolest" is so much predominant in the above mentioned population group, that they prefer to send wall-to-wall messages even if they are sitting next to each other in a classroom or a cafetaria.

Facebook & Myspace offer the perfect atmosphere for not only sharing as a group, but also as an individual.Users get to play games and write blogs.Also, I think these portals offer the opportunity to brag about things which are not really considered very important in the mainstream. Say,an announcement is made that a certain user 'A' scored 100% on a movie quiz. Now these things really dont carry too much weight professionally, or in the acadmeic world.However;youngsters derive a sense of achievement and it boosts their self-confidence and self-perception.

Sometimes social networking sites are also used by people who have lost touch with their friends and colleagues, and at a certain stage in life they get a strong feeling to reconnect. The age of these users may not be fitting the teenage/YA population.Infact these users may be in their middle age .Social networking sites allow easy way of communication and such users "stick" to these protals for the sheer fascination of it. When they were teenagers/YA, they perhaps never had the liberty of "hanging around" so much, and now they get an opportunity to fulfill those unfullfilled yearnings.

In any case I believe the "stickiness" has got to do with the internal psychology of users. These sites have very successfully studied human behavior, and the potential it has for their business so they are happily tapping upon it.