SOCIAL NETWORKING By Nikki Thurmond, Annia Parra, Emily Wells, Sarah McGhee

Defining a Social Network  Boyd’s definition  Online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others  Provide a variety of ways for users to interact

Why are Social Networks important?  Greater time online is spent communicating  40 million Americans with broadband connections contribute regularly to Social Networking sites

History of  Origins go back to 1999 when Tom Anderson and Chris Dewolfe launched a file sharing service  By July 2004 there were 2 million members and by December 2004 MySpace members doubled to 4 million and surpassed Friendster  In April 2005, the state of New York filed a lawsuit against Intermix alleging that MySpace was the source of Spyware and Adware that had been installed on millions of home computers

History of  In July 2005, News Corporation bought Intermix Media for $580 million  In December 2005 MySpace began its succession of “widget-blocking” and blocked YouTube  In July 2006, MySpace surpassed Yahoo Mail as the most accessed domain on the internet with 90 million users  In August 2006, MySpace and Google entered an exclusive search agreement worth $900 million over a period of 3 years

History of MySpace  In December 2006, MySpace launched its mobile campaign so that it could be accessed via users’ cell phones  In February 2007, MySpace blocked Imeem – a popular music site

History of  In May 2007, MySpace purchased Photobucket for $250 million – this signified that MySpace “came to the conclusion” it could not hold back/ignore ALL competitors  MySpace has proved to be one of the most lucrative internet sites to date  In 3 short years it went from a corporation project to a huge social network with upwards of 180 million users by its third year!

MySpace vs. Facebook  As of April 2008 Facebook had million users while MySpace had million users  Although Facebook is rapidly gaining users, MySpace is way ahead of the game in terms of music  MySpace launched MySpace Music mid-2008 with the support of 4 major music labels

MySpace vs. Facebook  On the other hand, Facebook is much more popular internationally – as of 2008, Facebook received more international views than MySpace  Currently, Facebook receives 1,191,373,339 visits each months while MySpace receives 810,153,536 monthly visits

MySpace vs. Facebook: Users  The majority of kids of Facebook tend to come from families who emphasize the importance of education and going to college – started as a collegiate only website  The majority of kids on MySpace are kids that don’t fit into the dominant high school paradigm, kids who are really into music/are in a band, and ethnic minorities

 General Growth  More than 200 million active users  More than 100 million users log on at least once a day  User Engagement  Average user has 120 friends  More than 3.5 billion minutes spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)  More than 20 million users update statuses at least once a day

Facebook  Applications  No. 1 photo sharing application in the world  More than 850 million photos uploaded monthly  More than 8 million videos uploaded monthly  More than 1 billion pieces of content shared weekly  Mobile  30 million users access Facebook through mobile devices  50% more active than non-mobile users

Facebook: International Growth  Top 10 countries in order of active users: US, Canada, UK, Australia, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, France, China  More than 40 translations  70% of users are outside US

Facebook: A Business Network  Facebook opens doors to ‘geezers’ in 2006  Two-thirds of users are outside of college  Fastest growing demographic: 276% growth for year olds in 6 months  194% growth rate for 55+  year old users doubling every 6 months

vs.

Facebook: New Google?  Facebook is ‘sexy’  College grads  Google’s top 10 performers switch in 2 months  2-4 leaving each month  Not just about the money  6 reasons Facebook may be the next Google:  People love Facebook  Corporations love Facebook  Google employees love Facebook  Advertising more targeted than Google  My dad uses Facebook  Facebook killed and IM

Facebook  Old fashioned people watching  Start and end their day with Facebook  Friends 24 hours a day  Educational benefits  Race, ethnicity, and education barriers

Facebook and Advertising

One Friend Facebook Hasn’t Made Yet: Privacy Rights  Generational Divide  Boyd: “Privacy Paradox”  Challenging the 4 th Amendement  Ex: The “Star Wars Kid”The “Star Wars Kid”  Ex: South ParkSouth Park

Where is our information going?  Facebook’s social contract  The Beacon nightmare

Where is our information going?  The rise of the “Fan Sumer”  Third party applications

How to Protect Your Online Privacy 1. If you do not want people to find out about something, don’t post it online. 2. Use a “throw-away” address 3. Be smart about what you post. Don’t give clues to others about your location or any other sensitive information 4. Be picky about who you add as a friend 5. Use the options provided by the social networking site about what details you want to make public to everyone and what you only want friends to see

Privacy Issues Get Even Creepier: Facebook Stalking  Levels of Facebook Stalking  Most people engage in innocent “stalking”  There are some people who know way too much about people they don’t even knowknow way too

The Future of Facebook Privacy: Parents  Parents are encouraged to be involved and monitor their child’s social networking sites  More and more parents getting a Facebook of their own  Is the presence of a parent on Facebook enough to curb inappropriate sharing of personal information?

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