Social Network Sites

Highlight and reflect on the article main points via a Process Blog post.

Social Network Sites:

• ·      Are described as “well based services” that allow people to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.
• ·      Networking is not the primary practice of these sites, or finding people, but to connect with people who are already in their social circle. (labeled, “social network sites”)
• ·      Structural variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate themselves from each other
• ·      First social network – 1997 – sixdegrees.com – closed 2000 because it was not serviceable enough
• ·      Others were launches between 1997 and 2000
• ·      Ryze launched in 2001 – manage business networks
• ·      Friendster - "one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history"
• ·      three key SNSs that shaped the business: cultural, and research landscape
• ·      Facebook was designed to support distinct college networks only.
• ·      Beginning in September 2005, Facebook expanded to include high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone.
• ·      Other corporations have started investing research, time, and money into social media sites because of the ever more growth of them.
• ·      Social networks are broad, and theyre starting to become more specific
• ·      U.S. Congress has proposed legislation to ban youth from accessing SNSs in schools and libraries
• ·      SNS is organized around people … not interests
• ·      “Fakesters” – fake profiles
• ·      Ties between people can be weak ties – example : facebook
• ·      SNSs are "networked publics" that support sociability, just as unmediated public spaces do.
• ·      In addition to the themes identified above, a growing body of scholarship addresses other aspects of SNSs, their users, and the practices they enable. For example, scholarship on the ways in which race and ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality connect to, are affected by, and are enacted in social network sites raise interesting questions about how identity is shaped within these sites.
• ·      Cyworld—the online context reinforces certain aspects of users' cultural expectations about relationship maintenance

The past 20 years, social networks have exploded throughout the Internet. Many have crashed and burned, and some remain what most people log on to on a daily basis (ie: facebook, linkdin). It is a phenomenon that’s expanded all over the world and a multi billion dollar industry. There is so much that goes into the making and maintaining of a social website and so many different aspects. Between relationship maintenance and issues of identity, performance, privacy, self-presentation, and civic engagement, the research seems never ending. The social network sites continue to grow and more and more features and information is provided for them. These show how online and offline experiences are directly correlated.