Friends Don’t Need Receipts: The Curious Case of Social Awareness Streams in the Mobile Payment App Venmo

We study the inclusion of a social awareness stream (SAS) in the peer-to-peer payment app Venmo. While SASs are prominent in many social network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, Venmo’s use offers an illustrative example of how SASs can be used in task-oriented apps, particularly in a domain, finance, which people often view as sensitive. Through interviews with 14 Venmo users and surveys of 164 peer-to-peer payment app users and 80 Venmo users, we find uses consistent with other SASs and uncover novel uses that reflect the unusual inclusion of an SAS within a utilitarian app for personal finance. For many users, the SAS is a flexible feature that creates an experience that blends their task-driven use with social benefits. People write purely functional transaction descriptions with strangers, while in transactions with friends, they sometimes craft playful descriptions that enhance their experience or perform their social relationships. The SAS provides opportunities for learning about how to use the application and for keeping up with friends. The results of this study extend the CSCW community’s knowledge of SASs and offer guidance to designers considering use of SAS in a variety of applications.