Social Networking Websites

Social Networking Websites

• What are they?

• Tool for:

• Communication

• Expressing interests

• “Nodes and Ties”

• Recent phenomena

• Digg, 2004

• Youtube, 2005

• Myspace, 2003

• Facebook, 2004

How the Technology Operates

• Specialization vs. Integration

• Youtube, Digg, Del.icio.us, Livejournal

• Myspace, Facebook

• Web 2.0

• Change in trend

• Enhanced creativity, information sharing, collaboration, and functionality

• User-contribution

• Users submit content for other users

History

Early social networking websites:

1995 - classmates.com

focused on ties between former schoolmates

1997 – sixdegrees.com

focused on indirect ties

History, cont’d

Modern social networking websites:

• 2002 – Friendster

• now mostly used in Asia

• 2003 – Myspace

• bought by News Corporation (parent company of Fox) in 2005

• most popular social networking site in 2006

• 2004 - Facebook (founded by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard as thefacebook.com)

• largest and fastest growing site in the world

• membership initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Ivy League; later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over

• 2005 - Bebo

• stands for “blog early, blog often”

History, cont’d

Developments

• Third-party applications

• Privacy settings

• Instant messaging

• News feed (Facebook)

• Music (Myspace)

Positive Aspects for Social Networking

• Ease of access to recent trends/topics

• Digg

• Faster communication over longer distances

• Facebook, Myspace, Digg

• Big audience

• Blogging (Blogger, Livejournal, Youtube, Wordpress)

• Equating computer to sociability; second life

• Facebook, Myspace

• Promoting False Identities

• Celebrities/Political

• Site Security

• Lack of customer service

• Accessibility and reliability

• Child Safety

• Stalking

• Party gatecrashing

• Crashing uninvited parties which were advertised through sites like Myspace and Facebook where anyone could see the invitation.

Criticisms against Social Networks

Criticisms against Social Networks, cont’d

• Social Exploitation and Censorship

• Social and Cultural

• Dave Itzkoff and his experience

• Censorship

• Privacy

• Security

•MIT and 70,000+ Facebook profiles

Our Opinion?

Social networking sites have caused much debate among users across the globe. They help us to connect more easily to others, display our interests in a public forum, and allow us to forge connections despite vast space between users.

Positive aspects:

• Simple, user friendly set up and personalization

• Usually cost efficient/free

• Easily accessible and globally available

Positive aspects notwithstanding, there are some arguments against social networking sites, including:

Our Opinion? cont’d

• Lack of privacy/ control over what is public and not

• Encourages procrastination

• Tendency to compartmentalize and make vague and occasionally unfair assumptions about others

Generally speaking, social networking sites are seen as positive among the CMU community.