Tag: social networks

BBC Radio 4 The Secret History of Social Networking, Episode 3

Synopsis

The social networking game isn’t over yet – Rory Cellan-Jones looks at the sites of the future and asks where the phenomenon is heading.
The power of social networks has taken off in recent years. Now, there are more than half a billion Facebook users, but does that mean that one site will dominate social networking in the future? Rory visits the headquarters of microblogging site Twitter, where a new way of sharing information is being developed.
With the explosive growth of Facebook has come vigorous debate about privacy, sharing information online, and about what online social networking is doing to our relationships. Today, some young entrepreneurs think they’ve spotted gaps in the market where Facebook is vulnerable.
New sites are springing up all the time. The future of social networking could lie in localised sites geared towards specific interests, in limiting your online circle to your closest friends, or in sites that allow users to keep control of their personal information.
Finally, Rory returns to the social networking pioneers of the 70s and 80s. How do the hippies and hackers who created the first social network think their revolution has turned out? Part 3 of 3.

Interviewees include:
Biz Stone, co-founder, Twitter
Dennis Crowley, co-founder, Foursquare
Reid Hoffman, co-founder, LinkedIn
Dave Morin, co-founder, Path
Brian Hughes Halferty, co-founder, Kiltr
Johan Stael von Holstein, co-founder, MyCube
Daniel Grippi, co-founder Diaspora*
Baroness Susan Greenfield, professor of pharmacology, Lincoln College Oxford
Natalia Morari, Moldovan journalist and activist
Larry Brilliant, co-founder, The WELL
John Perry Barlow, early WELL user, co-founder Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lee Felsenstein, co-founder, Community Memory.

via bbc.co.uk

Divorce spreads through social networks

A completely fascinating study published on the Social Science Research Network looked at how likely a marriage was to survive depending on who else in the social network was getting divorced.

The study used data from the famous Framington Heart Study and found that while we tend to think of marriage as a ‘couple thing’ is turns out that even our most intimate bonds are deeply embedded into the social webs we weave.

via mindhacks.com

If you divorce then it’s more likely that your friends will also divorce. This is a finding of the authors of ‘Connected’ Christiakis and Fowler. A large part of what we learn we learn by mimesis – imitating those around us, particularly, those important to us. We learn to smoke (and to stop smoking) from those around us. We get obese for the same reasons. But the idea that divorce – matters of the heart – are equally influenced by our social network, is surprising.

Research ethics and social networking

Science of the Invisible: Research Ethics in the MySpace Era

A better analogy for research on social networking Web sites would be research on newspaper personal ads. Similar to a MySpace profile, the information is intended to be available to the public and invites correspondence. Both the personal ad and a MySpace profile may contain very personal and intimate information, but this information has been
selected by its owner to be published in a public forum. The “subjects” might claim that they did not intend for the information to be used for research purposes, but they could not plausibly claim that the information was private.

Social media report March 2008

Universal McCann
has released a new report on the impact of social media (such as blogs, social networks, online video) on the media landscape. It surveyed 17,000 Internet users worldwide in March 2008. The report found that
social media, in particular blogs, are “becoming a more important part of global media consumption for internet users than some traditional media channels.” The report also found that social media is a global
phenomenon (29 countries were surveyed), although there are cultural differences in how people use it.

The report states that “video clips, blogs, podcasts, social networks and RSS are all essential components of the online media diet.” Here are some of the key findings:

- 83% watch video clips, up from 62% in the last study in June 2007
- 78% read blogs, up from 66%
- 57% of internet users are now members of a social network
- RSS consumption is growing rapidly up from 15% to 39%
- Podcasts are now mainstream digital content, listened to by 48%

Social networks have been “a key driver for the growth of social media”:

- 22% of social network users have installed a widget or applications
- 55% have shared photos
- 22% have shared their videos
- 31% have started a blog
- The world’s biggest social network is MySpace with 32% weekly reach followed by Facebook on 23%

The report also states that social media is a global phenomenon:

- Top markets for blogging – China 70% of internet users write a blog, Philippines 66% and Mexico 60%
- Top markets for social networking – Philippines 83%, Hungary 76% and Poland 76%
- China is the world’s largest blogging market with 42m bloggers versus 26m in the US

Those last stats will be an eye opener for many, because the US web tech market gets most of the attention of the blogosphere and mainstream media. But with China having 42m bloggers compared to the US’s 26m, there is large scope for social media to flourish there – even despite China’s political issues with social media.