Personal Profile Settings as Cultural Frames: Facebook Versus Vkontakte

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in cross-country comparative studies of multiple social networking site (SNS) platforms, and the aim of these studies is to uncover the impact of culture on the use of SNSs. The present article seeks to advance this line of research by drawing a distinction between platform difference and usage difference. It argues that culture affects both the design and use of an SNS platform. Through comparing and contrasting the personal profile settings of Facebook and Vkontakte, the article shows that the design features of these two SNS platforms reflect the cultural characteristics of the countries from which the platforms originated. The cultural patterns that are encoded in the design features of the platforms inevitably influence the use of the platforms. This finding suggests the need to control for platform difference while examining the impact of culture on usage difference in cross-country studies of multiple SNS platforms.