9/19/2018 Social Networks 9/19/2018

Contents Introduction Facebook MySpace History Joining Home Page Friends Privacy Principles MySpace 9/19/2018

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 9/19/2018

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/info.php?statistics 9/19/2018

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 9/19/2018

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 9/19/2018

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 9/19/2018

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 9/19/2018

Which Principles does Facebook embody? 9/19/2018 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 9/19/2018

The next most popular SNS: MySpace www.myspace.com More color, music Younger users Better graphics Fewer applications More spam What do you think? 9/19/2018

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 9/19/2018

Who uses SNS? http://social-media-optimization.com/2009/08/social-networks-demographics/ 9/19/2018