INTRODUCTION

Facebook originates in 2004 as a virtual place for Harvard University students. The idea was so successful that the project to date is the most widely used social media website in the world with more than two billion users (We are social and Hootsuite, 01-30-2019). The growing volume of business has made this company go down in history in 2012 for being the technology company with the highest IPO (20minutos.es, 05/18/2012). Its commercial expansion has allowed it to acquire important computer applications such as Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp (El Mundo, 02/01/2017).

In 2017, it incorporated seventy million active users in a single quarter, something that it had never achieved before and that forces those responsible for the social networks of companies, even more, to include it in the fundamental strategies of Social Media Marketing (Mejía, 05/02/2017). With more than thirty-seven thousand employees at the end of March 2019 (Facebook-Newsroom, 2019), it is mainly financed by sales from advertising in continuous growth, especially on mobile devices (El Mundo, 02/01/2017).

The business at the moment continues to expand, more and more people integrate this platform into their daily lives, hence many researchers from various areas have paid attention to the study of social networks to try to understand the practices of users, the implications that these have in culture, and the meaning of these types of applications (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Salzinger, Antrobus, & Hammer, 2015). Therefore, one of the main objectives of both Facebook and the companies and institutions that have incorporated it into their operation would be precisely to analyze how and why they use this platform and observe its evolution over the years according to patterns such as age, gender, or occupation.

The biggest consumers of social networks are young people (18 to 34 years old), where 90% use them regularly (Colas-Bravo, González-Ramírez, and de Pablos-Pons, 2013; We are social and Hootsuite, 01/30/2019). This data coincides with the Ecuadorian population; If the number of hours dedicated to this type of network is compared according to the age segment, young people are the ones who dedicate the most time to it in the Andean country (García-Guerrero, 2015).

Latin America is one of the regions of the world with the most activity in social networks, with Facebook being the one with the highest incidence and with a great difference compared to the rest of digital platforms (Hutchinson, 2016). In Ecuador, the incursion of new technologies has grown considerably in recent years, although it still presents a slight digital gap between young people and adults (Jiménez-Sánchez, Ortega-Mohedano, Vayas-Ruiz, Martínez-Bonilla, & Lavín, 2019). By 2020, the Andean country has about twelve million inhabitants who actively use digital social networks (69% of the population), where Facebook is the seventh most visited website and one of the first in time-of-use. The most used device to access is the mobile phone (96.8%). The rest of the platforms such as Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, or Snapchat are still far from its figures, although in recent years Instagram has grown quite quickly to reach four million users ( ; Dávalos, 03/14/2020) (Datareportal, 2020).

Due to these figures and the impact on the lives of its users, it is convenient to delve into the different motivations that underlie this virtual platform.

OBJECTIVES

Thus, the main objective of this research is to analyze satisfaction with the platform and its relationship with the different motivational dimensions, differentiating on the one hand between students and workers, and on the other, possible discrepancies between gender and age.

The derived results may be relevant for any company interested in using Facebook for its commercial activity as proposed by the platform itself (Facebook for business, 2019). The final purpose is to continue contributing to the construction of a geo-cultural map that allows understanding the satisfaction and motivations for the platform.

METHODOLOGY

During the 2016-2017 academic period, a questionnaire was provided to 214 students and 50 workers from the Technical University of Ambato (central Ecuador) with a Facebook profile to measure the variables related to its use. 54.9% men and 43.6% women (1.5% did not indicate). The age range of students is from 17 to 28 years old (Average=20) and that of workers from 25 to 58 years old (Average=36). Given that the total university student and employee population is 18,000 (16,000 and 2,000 respectively), a minimum sample of 263 people is obtained with a 95% confidence level and a 6% margin of error. The type of sampling to be used is by two-stage conglomerates, where the different careers to participate are first defined (Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physical Culture, Biochemistry, Graphic Design, Accounting and Auditing, Social Communication) and later, simple random sampling is applied for selecting courses.

Thus, a survey was conducted of a class or parallel by career (seven in total) and workers from different areas (especially professors and university administration personnel). All were informed of the purpose of the research and of the anonymous nature of the questionnaire that they had to answer voluntarily. The survey time was approximately 7 minutes.

This questionnaire is based on the previous study by I Igartua and Dios (2016), which also takes as references other researches, and especially that of Sheldon (2008). The degree of satisfaction is valued from 1 (minimum) to 10 (maximum), while for the uses a Likert-type scale is used from 1 (minimum motivation) to 5 (maximum).

The items are adapted to the Ecuadorian linguistic context, to extract data on the various motivations in the use of Facebook, the way of using this social network, and their satisfaction with the platform. To validate this adaptation, first, a pre-test or test questionnaire with 30 students is used, after doing it individually, a discussion phase about the understanding of the items and suggestions is carried out. Finally, the Cronbach's alpha of this first sample is analyzed to rule out those issues that affect lower reliability. Thus, the final evaluation instrument has an alpha of .930 for students and .944 for workers.

Subsequently, the data are analyzed with the statistical program SPSS (Version 23 for Windows). To check the possible differences between students and workers, Pearson’s correlations are applied for the quantitative variables and the U-Mann-Whitney for the ordinal variables. Then a factorial analysis of main components is applied to reduce the dimensionality of the data set and finally the t-Student to see the difference of the factors extracted in students and employed persons.

The research complies with the standards set by the Research and Teaching Ethics Committee of the Technical University of Ambato.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS

Regarding the raised motivational dimensions, the results denote a concept of Facebook as a tool that facilitates the daily activities of some users framed in a particular psychological, evolutionary, social, and cultural context. Therefore, it is recommended to replicate this type of research by comparing different age ranges, such as elderly people. It is necessary to insert new responses adapted to the way of life of each generation, taking into consideration other indicators such as personality (Ryan & Xenos, 2011), family conditions, socio-cultural, political, and economic context. Therefore, it is not possible to speak of a single target with which to predict the motivations of use, but of several targets with uses and rewards of various kinds that Facebook tries to satisfy.

Thus, it is concluded that the uses and gratifications (Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitz, 1986) observed in this research are predominantly of a social (acceptance) and playful nature, covering part of the basic needs of the human being (Maslow, 1970). Furthermore, the multiple possibilities offered by the platform and the differences found in the analyzed groups make it possible to determine various and intermixed rewards, such as, for example, more focused on entertainment and self-expression or recognition in young people, or more aimed at maintaining relationships in the case of working adults. That is why we must bear in mind that the different segments evolve and change over time, and Facebook, aware of this, has been able to offer a wide range of possibilities capable of satisfying the needs and adapting to the trends of each part of the population as it has been changing.

Regarding these data, future studies should use original sources as much as possible, in this case, request information from Facebook itself. This would also solve problems such as establishing a common baseline with which to classify uses in a concrete and non-speculative way. Thus, accurate comparisons could be made regarding the number of videos they see on Facebook, the time they spend chatting, or the exact number of comments posted each day.

As it has been deduced, Facebook is not just another platform, but "The platform". It has become a mass communication channel, and in some cases elitist because it excludes from social life those who do not want to be part of this network of friends.

In turn, it has created a series of habits that it satisfies in a correct and well-thought-out way. It has become a virtual daily agenda, where one can congratulate birthdays, look at the current news, the weather in your city, or the assignments that the teacher has sent for the class; thus, increasing the typical effects of any habit, especially that of psychological dependence (Luengo, 2004; Villafuerte & Mainé, 2005). The used algorithms do not cease to surprise each year, either to show the posts and comments that may interest one the most, or that advertisement related to individual tastes.

In this field, Facebook has gained followers thanks to its voyeuristic component, where many users decide to opt for a passive position in their activities but active when observing those of others. In this sense, the information provided in many cases is not trivial (marital status, place of birth, residence, occupation, studies carried out, etc.), something that is being used above all by marketing companies that increasingly use the data to provide more specific advertising and in accordance with the heterogeneous clients, since we must not forget that Facebook is free, so the company must be financed in other ways such as advertising (El Mundo, 02/01/2017).

To this must be added the advantage that Facebook has in the omission of certain responsibilities regarding comments or offensive content where the company should take measures in this regard and "not clean their hands", leaving it to the users who have to be the ones to report and not the platform itself.

In short, it can be concluded that social networks are a tool with the capacity to socialize a group of people in a parallel way to physical social reality (García-Giménez, 2010), creating through them feelings of belonging and identity that satisfy the needs to express oneself, share, and interpret a concrete fact with a group.

Being the most widely used social network, it is pending that technological evolution and marketing have other digital tools that replace or facilitate each of the services offered by Facebook, which has become part of the daily lives of millions of people, groups, companies, or institutions whose way of communicating, satisfying their different needs, and especially defining ourselves in one way or another has changed.

REFERENCES