Social Networks

1
Social Networks
2
Contents

• Introduction
• Facebook
• History
• Joining
• Home Page
• Friends
• Privacy
• Principles
• MySpace

3
Introduction

• Social Networks, groups of people tied by
  interdependencies, have been studied by
  sociologists for decades.
• B. Wellman and S. Berkowitz. Eds, Social
  Structures, a Network Approach, Cambridge
  University Press, 1988
• We are interested in social networking websites,
  where the ties are via the web.
• See how important they are at http//alexa.com

4
Facebook History

• Created in 2004 by Mark Zukerberg and classmates
  at Harvard
• Initially for Harvard only, gradually expanded,
  now for all
• Currently 250 million active users worldwide, 120
  million log in each day.
• Statistics are at http//www.facebook.com/press/in
  fo.php?statistics

5
Joining Facebook

• Need to be 13 and have an email address
• www.facebook.com
• Name, email, password, gender, birthdate, captcha
• FB checks your email address book for friends
• If you wish, sends them requests
• Create your profile hometown, relationship, etc.
• Used to find friends, choose ads
• Optionally upload a photo
• Join networks based on city, school or job
• Used to find friends, choose ads, decide who can
  view your info
• Join groups
• Used to find friends, choose ads

6
Your home page

• Newsfeed/Wall in the middle
• I can type an entry and attach things to it
• It will appear on all my friends' newsfeeds
• Unless they have hidden me
• Left filters for the newsfeed
• You can also hide friends
• Right unanswered requests, ads, suggestions
• Bottom applications, chat
• Click profile to see what others see
• Info tab
• Photos
• Top Friends
• Top Inbox is a kind of email

7
Top Menu Friends

• Mouseover, then click All Friends
• Can create lists of friends
• Permissions can be restricted to lists
• Mouseover, then click Find friends
• Uses your profile and other info to suggest
  friends
• Friends are the lifeblood of Facebook
• You will get lots of friend requests, some from
  strangers
• Whom will you befriend?
• Younger people tend to befriend everyone
• Average number of friends is 120

8
Privacy

• Top Menu Settings/Privacy/Manage
• The real issue here is what are the defaults
• Profile
• Notice that because I joined the PSU network
  recently, everyone in that network can see
  everything!
• Notice that I can choose to allow only friends on
  certain lists to see parts of my information
• Search
• News Feed and Wall
• Actions within Facebook
• Facebook ads Controversial
• Applications also controversial, because a
  friend's application may snoop at your
  information
• Only 20 of users ever change a privacy setting!
• http//www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/business/08digi.
  html

9
Which Principles does Facebook embody?

• Data Rules The value of an application is
  increased by the scale and dynamism of the data
  it manages
• The long tail Small products/ideas make up the
  great majority of all products/ideas.
• Use your Users Enable users to contribute
  content to the application
• The Power of Groups Apply the wisdom of users to
  solve problems
• Enable Community Enable users to share their
  experiences in your application
• Folksonomy, not Taxonomy Utilize user-generated
  tags to classify items, instead of expertly
  generated categories

10
The next most popular SNS MySpace

• www.myspace.com
• More color, music
• Younger users
• Better graphics
• Fewer applications
• More spam
• What do you think?

11
Twitter

• See my home page
• Tweets of people I am following
• precedes a topic that can be searched
• RT means ReTweet
• _at_ precedes the name of another user

12
Who uses SNS?

• http//social-media-optimization.com/2009/08/socia
  l-networks-demographics/