Social Networking Topics

• social networking sites
• specialised communities
• mainstream users
• facebook
• networking experience
• google
• friendster
• networking services
• privacy controls
• weinreich
• myspace
• esn
• mobile community
• social networks
• web users
• ellison
• cooks
• page views
• connectivity
• innovations

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Weinreich, 2007, cited by Boyd & Ellison, 2007, p.3) One such model of social networking that came about in 1999 was trust-based, such as that developed by Epinions.com. Innovations included not only showing who is "friends" with whom, but giving users more control over content and connectivity. Between 2002 and 2004, three social networking sites emerged as the most popular form of these sites in the world, causing such sites to become part of mainstream users globally. First there was Friendster (which Google tried to acquire in 2003), then, MySpace, and finally, Bebo. By 2005, MySpace, emergent as the biggest of them all, was reportedly getting more page views than Google.

An ESN is open/public and available to all web users to communicate and are designed to attract advertisers. ESN's can be smaller specialised communities (i.e. linked by a single common interest eg TheSocialGolfer, ACountryLife.Com, Great Cooks Community) or they can be large generic social networking sites (eg MySpace, Facebook etc).

Users can upload a picture of themselves, create their 'profile' and can often be "friends" with other users. In most social networking services, both users must confirm that they are friends before they are linked. For example, if Alice lists Bob as a friend, then Bob would have to approve Alice's friend request before they are listed as friends. Some social networking sites have a "favorites" feature that does not need approval from the other user. Social networks usually have privacy controls that allows the user to choose who can view their profile or contact them, etc.

Some companies provide wireless services which allow their customers to build their own mobile community and brand it, but one of the most popular wireless services for social networking in North America is Facebook Mobile. Other companies provide new innovative features which extend the social networking experience into the real world.

Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are great ways to build their brand image. According to Jody Nimetz, author of Marketing Jive http://www.marketing-jive.com/2007/11/jody-nimetz-on-emerging-trends-in-b2b.html , there are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create brand awareness, as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn about new technologies and competitors, and as a lead gen tool to intercept potential prospects. http://www.marketing-jive.com/2007/11/jody-nimetz-on-emerging-trends-in-b2b.html . These companies are able to drive traffic to their own online sites while encouraging their consumers and clients to have discussions on how to improve or change products or services.

Julia Porter Liebeskind (University of Soutern California), Amalya Lumerman Oliver(Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel), Lynne Zucker (University of California) and Marilynn Brewer(Ohio State University) recently published a study on how New Biotechnology Firms(NBF's) are using social networking sites to share exchanges in scientific knowledge.

Many studies have been done on the effectiveness of networking online in a college setting, and one notable one is by Phipps Arabie and Yoram Wind published in "Advances in Social Network Analysis" http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=C6juDKDmvCcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=social+networking&ots=Aw9oXw-AtG&sig=CPAZMmPPnAhSZzAu0lh-k4iUXt4#PRA1-PA254,M1 Of course the most popular social networking sites are facebook, myspace, twitter, and youtube but a number of new sites and social groups are born each day http://sparxoo.com/2009/02/23/top-5-virtual-villages/ . Ning.com allows you to create your own social networking site to fit your own niche group.

This danger was highlighted when the controversial social networking site Quechup harvested e-mail addresses from users' e-mail accounts for use in a spamming operation.

It is not clear whether the same rules apply to researchers who collect data from social networking sites. These sites often contain a great deal of data that is hard to obtain via traditional means. Even though the data are public, republishing it in a research paper might be considered invasion of privacy.

Social networking tools serve as a quick and easy way for the government to get the opinion of the public and the keep the public updated on their activity. The Centers for Disease Control demonstrated the importance of vaccinations on the popular children's site Whyville and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a virtual island on Second Life where people can explore underground caves or explore the effects of global warming.

Source: Wikipedia > Social Network Service