User engagement, a key factor in the success of social media platforms, has long been based on permanent content. A recent paradigm shift in platform design has led large social media providers to implement ephemerality features that by default make shared content disappear after a certain amount of time. However, very little is known about how ephemerality features affect user engagement and behavior in social media. Drawing upon the technology affordance perspective, we conducted a qualitative multimethod study involving individual interviews and focus groups. Our findings show that the affordances arising from features with varying degrees of ephemerality (i.e., snaps and stories) differ from those of permanent content features in terms of self-presentation, browsing others’ content, and communication. Adopting a multidimensional conceptualization of user engagement, we show the positive (e.g., more content sharing) and negative (e.g., cognitive burden from context loss) effects for snaps and stories that should be cautiously considered by social media platforms aiming to introduce such features. Finally, we reveal new user behaviors that relate to sharing snapshots of fleeting value as snaps or experiences of transient value as stories.

中文翻译：

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短暂性功能如何影响用户与社交媒体平台的互动

用户参与度是社交媒体平台成功的关键因素，长期以来一直基于永久内容。最近平台设计的范式转变导致大型社交媒体提供商实施短暂性功能，默认情况下共享内容会在一段时间后消失。然而，人们对短暂性功能如何影响社交媒体中的用户参与度和行为知之甚少。根据技术可供性的观点，我们进行了一项涉及个人访谈和焦点小组的定性多方法研究。我们的研究结果表明，不同程度的短暂性特征（即快照和故事）所产生的可供性与永久内容特征在自我呈现、浏览他人内容和交流方面有所不同。采用用户参与的多维概念化，我们展示了快照和故事的积极（例如，更多内容共享）和消极（例如，上下文丢失带来的认知负担）影响，旨在引入此类功能的社交媒体平台应谨慎考虑这些影响。最后，我们揭示了新的用户行为，这些行为与将短暂价值的快照分享为快照或将短暂价值的体验分享为故事有关。