Length Matters: Message Metrics that Result in Higher Levels of Perceived Partner Responsiveness and Changes in Intimacy as Friends Communicate through Social Network Sites

This study focuses on how young adults enact their relationships in public through self-disclosing interactions on Facebook. A Facebook self-disclosure status update, along with as many as three corresponding response comments, was copied by each of 271 participants from their own Facebook Wall, and pasted to an online survey. Status update and response comments contain characters such as letters, numbers, and symbols to express meaning. Seven textual measures were used to quantify the content of these messages; one such measure was a count of the number of characters contained in each response. Results show message length is associated with perceived partner responsiveness and feelings of increased intimacy with those who reply to one’s status update with a response comment. Women, and close friends and family post longer messages. The outward appearance of a message matters for the perception of responsive communication on Facebook