Much of the research exploring social networking sites as a tool for initiating relationships between people has focused on the relational outcomes of such online-initiated relationships. Little to no attention has been given to the nature of the initial interactions that ensue between unacquainted individuals who meet on such websites. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the impact of viewing personal information from social networking profiles on the verbal behaviors during initial online conversations between strangers. The online conversation transcripts between forty one stranger dyads from Paul and Morrison’s (2014) study were used. Out of these, twenty two dyads viewed their conversational partners’ Facebook profiles before having an online conversation with them, while nineteen dyads viewed their conversational partners’ profiles after the conversation. These conversation transcripts were coded for number and types of questions, breadth and depth dimensions of self-disclosures, and the topics of conversation to gauge if individuals discussed topics they were similar on. The Facebook profiles were also coded to measure the extent of actual similarity between dyads. Results showed that viewing Facebook profiles prior to chatting led individuals to ask less number of questions but make more intimate disclosures to their conversational partners. However, there was no significant difference in the number of similarity topics discussed between the two groups of participants. Intimate disclosures and discussing topics of similarity were found to be positively related to feelings of predictability toward conversational partners. Also, the perception of being similar was a stronger predictor of liking their conversational partners than actually being similar to them.
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