Reciprocity, Homophily, and Social Network Effects in Pictorial Communication: A Case Study of Bitmoji Stickers

TL;DR

This study analyzes how users employ Bitmoji stickers in social networks, revealing patterns of reciprocity, homophily, and the influence of sticker exchanges on user engagement, based on a large-scale dataset from Snapchat.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale empirical analysis of Bitmoji sticker usage, uncovering behavioral patterns and social effects in pictorial communication.

Findings

Users are either reciprocal and selective or neither.

Friends tend to use Bitmoji stickers at similar rates.

Receiving stickers encourages future usage and engagement.

Abstract

Pictorial emojis and stickers are commonly used in online social networking to facilitate and aid communications. We delve into the use of Bitmoji stickers, a highly expressive form of pictorial communication using avatars resembling actual users. We collect a large-scale dataset of the metadata of 3 billion Bitmoji stickers shared among 300 million Snapchat users. We find that individual Bitmoji sticker usage patterns can be characterized jointly on dimensions of reciprocity and selectivity: Users are either both reciprocal and selective about whom they use Bitmoji stickers with or neither reciprocal nor selective. We additionally provide evidence of network homophily in that friends use Bitmoji stickers at similar rates. Finally, using a quasi-experimental approach, we show that receiving Bitmoji stickers from a friend encourages future Bitmoji sticker usage and overall Snapchat engagement. We discuss broader implications of our work towards a better understanding of pictorial communication behaviors in social networks.