Ben Zimmerman CS2650: Distributed Multimedia Systems Fall 2010
Major Social Networks Facebook Youtube MySpace LinkedIn (career-based) Foursquare (location-based) Latitude (location-based)
The Facebook Started in 2004 Aimed at college students Required a.edu account Had “segregated” networks for each school Photo-sharing and tagging Could specify your residence hall, class schedule
Facebook 2.0 ( ) Became the social network for everyone to be apart of Addition of geographically-related networks Privacy settings related to your network memberships “Network X can see attribute Y about me” The Status Update incorporated Similar to what Twitter was already doing for years
Facebook 3.0 (2010) Privacy controls no longer related to networks Privacy is controlled on granularity of friends, friends- of-friends, family, co-workers, regardless of what networks they belong to “Friends can see my wall posts” “Family members cannot view this photo album”
Targeted Advertising Facebook has always been free for its users to access Supported by ad revenue The wealth of personal info like interests in movies, music, books allows for effective advertising As Facebook aimed to generate more revenue privacy changes occurred to allow greater access for outside vendors to information
Changes in Facebook’s Default Privacy Settings
Information Revelation Source: Gross, Ralph & Alessandro Acquisti. “Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks”
Privacy Implications Source: Gross, Ralph & Alessandro Acquisti. “Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks” Real-world location “check-ins” are becoming increasingly used in networks
Social Networks as SIS Natural slow intelligence systems Consists of two entities/groups, each with own SIS characteristics The SN as a business The Users of the SN for interaction with peers Currently, heavy focus on privacy due to wealth of personal information about each user
Enumeration The SN: as a business, considers ways of changing its features to attract revenue In the past, geared towards targeted advertising which required mining users’ personal data The users: have choices such as continuing to use, reducing usage, leaving, increasing usage, changing privacy settings (if available) Mainly due to the changes in privacy that will occur
Concentration SN: decides to implement one of the strategies considered in the enumeration phase Users: decide what their behavior will be in the future because of their preferences to privacy
Adaptation SN: implements the features it decided on This is where a complimentary cycle begins of considering how the users react to the changes Users: react to the changes according to their preferences by either altering their online habits or changing settings or information available
Propagation SN: makes users aware of changes via updates to the EULA Users: voice their opinions within the network itself (as well as other mediums) with the possibility of changing others opinions by doing so
Elimination SN: decides to not pursue/consider certain options in the future. May also be elimination of features/control for users Consider it a changing of business policies Users: some leave the network, or become very infrequent users
Network Petri Net
User Petri Net
Prototype Model
Refined Model
Additions to Refined Model Sinks for business policies, users, and user behaviors Capacity of 1 set for all SIS components (Enumerator, Concentrator, etc.)