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Social Networks
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2. Contents Introduction Facebook MySpace History Joining Home Page
Friends
Privacy
Principles
MySpace
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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
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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
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5. Joining Facebook Need to be 13 and have an email address
Name, , password, gender, birthdate, captcha
FB checks your 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
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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
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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
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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!
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9. Which Principles does Facebook embody?
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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
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10. The next most popular SNS: MySpace
More color, music
Younger users
Better graphics
Fewer applications
More spam
What do you think?
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11. Twitter See my home page Tweets of people I am following
# precedes a topic that can be searched
RT means ReTweet
@ precedes the name of another user
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12. Who uses SNS?
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