Using NFriendConnector to Extend Facebook to the Real World

This study presents a novel approach towards establishing online social connections using Facebook and NFC-enabled mobile phones. There is increasing convergence between users’ real life social networks and their online social networks, with online connections following actual social acquaintance and interactions. Accordingly there is a need to provide users with means of accessing and establishing online connections in social networking platforms such as Facebook as and when they interact with other people in their real lives. The NFriendConnector is a prototype application which fulfills this functionality. This paper describes the design and development of the prototype application. The expectation confirmation theory is used to analyze the extent to which the NFriendConnector fulfills this inherent need among users and how this influences their intention to adopt and use the prototype. The proposed research model is tested in an experimental setup.