Measuring the usefulness of social media information for new venture development decision-making

Social media are being adopted by a growing number of entrepreneurs. Yet, the majority of academic research has focused on social media as marketing tools. Little is known on how these media are used by entrepreneurs for information acquisition and to what extent entrepreneurs use social media information in their decision-making during venture development. This paper addresses this gap in two ways. First, by assessing to what extent entrepreneurs perform four entrepreneurial information acquisition behaviors in social media environments: questioning, idea networking, observing and experimenting (Dyers et al., 2008). Second, by analyzing the extent to which entrepreneurs use social media information in their decision making for venture development.