This literature review reports on the usefulness of social media to individual users, teams of users, and organizations. The authors examine 17 “selected scientific studies,” most of which were reported since 2008. (The total number of papers referenced is 69.)

The review focuses on several questions. The first concerns the meaning of success through the employment of an information system that is not only focused on social media. The remaining questions seek a consensus about how successful social web systems are for each of the three levels of users. The paper lists 12 empirical research methodologies and five conceptual approaches in the reviewed studies. Empirical research involves case studies, experiments, interviews, and questionnaires. The paper includes single-paragraph reviews of the relevant papers. The authors conclude that there is no single scientific definition of success related to the implementation of an information system. They also conclude that on the individual and team levels, the success of social media appears to be related to performance and user satisfaction. On the organizational level, consensus about success is not apparent. Among the major research efforts, one focuses on knowledge management, another on the web economy, and a third on business value.

Just as no agreed-upon basic problem seems to exist, no research model appears to dominate. The paper indicates that while many of them have made significant contributions to our understanding of how to evaluate social web applications, useful general principles have not emerged. The authors suggest many worthwhile research questions and give some structure for analyzing the usefulness of social media-based systems.