Social networking activity 5 feedback

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

November 12, 2008 [2460 views]

Thanks to all who completed this activity – a very good number! You now all have lots of profiles but I wonder how many you will use?

This was a good exercise because it was harder than it looked and if I am to be honest many of you failed to look beyond the surface of what you saw. This was disappointing if not unexpected. I hope after this feedback some of you will go and take another look.

Social networking is one of the driving forces of modern computing and few of you can have failed to see the growth of Facebook. But what is really going on?

I asked you to look at five different networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Twitter and Del.icio.us). All have distinct features and could provide you with different tools in the future.

Facebook is the best known and is a social community with photo sharing, profiles, messaging and more. Key to it’s role is its ability to host third party applications. These are important because they allow other sites and companies to tap into the data being exchanged and explored. If I write a Facebook application and make it popular than I have access to all the data of its users and that could be hugely valuable for market research, marketing and communication. Some of you have clearly spotted some of the privacy issues but many Facebook users don’t know or don’t care. We will have to all be careful what we give away on here.

LinkedIn is a professional social network and with nearly 20 million professional members may be much more useful to your careers than Facebook. I know a number of people who have been offered jobs directly on Facebook. It makes it’s money from job advertising and also has a powerful question and answer section which I recommend. Although you are new to the world of IT I recommend that you improve and start to link to people in this network. I would not be surprised if some of you could use it to get a placement.

Twitter has been described as a micro-blogging site or presence application. Presence has been defined as sharing your current availability and will be very important in the future in mobile applications. Twitter has recognised this and can be used entirely through your mobile as a very low cost “broadcast” device. It is also interesting because it was written quickly in Ruby on Rails.

The interestingly named del.icio.us is perhaps the social network that I use most and is a place to store interesting things you find online and offer them to others. I recommend that you start to store your bookmarks here and share them with others. When you come to do projects and later exercises you will be glad of del.icio.us to find the latest tools and technology sites. It can also be a way of finding experts in a particular area.

Digg is important as a way of sharing the latest news and stories from the web. In some ways it is therefore similar to del.icio.us but it is much more about what is popular now than what is useful. Ideas from Digg are popping up in lots of different sites.

How should you be using these sites in the future?

Explore applications and privacy issues in Facebook
Explore mobile using Twitter
Maintain your profile CV and start to build a professional network in LinkedIn. Read, ask and answers questions to build your reputation.
Store your professional and research bookmarks using del.icio.us and use this for future project work
Keep an eye on Digg to see what is happening in the world of the web
Lets really try and build groups within some of these networks that will help us communicate and share ideas in the future.

Questions raised by this activity

Why are there so many social networks out there?

This is a relatively new field and lots of companies want a “piece of the pie”. Lots of people have recognised the potential value (for advertising or data) of building a large community of regular users and different approaches are being explored. This is THE hot area at the moment.

Which company is richest at the moment?

MySpace is probably the one that has sold for most money (to News International) although Facebook is worth more (only sold off a little bit). Google will probably end up dominating this space (see Open Social).

Are there any legal implications of setting up these networks?

In the UK they would have to register under the Data Protection Act. All of these networks also have to be careful that they don’t get used for illegal activities such as “grooming children” or “money laundering”.

Will people have to pay in the future to be members?

I think this is very unlikely although we will all pay through advertising and ecommerce. Google proved you could make lots of money without charging customers directly.

Can we make a gaming social network where people play games online and update their scores?

There are a number of games networks already around but in theory you could build another. You could also build a Facebook app that allowed scores to be shared and this would be quicker.

Do you think the benefits of these social networking sites outweigh the problems that they pose?

The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back. Social networking is here to stay (like supermarket loyalty cards) and cannot easily be stopped. We all have to get used to how they work and the facilities they offer. Used well they offer enormous benefits.

Why is Facebook so addictive ?

This is a really good question and I am sure will be the subject of many PhDs and studies in the future. I think it all comes down to our need to be liked and to be popular. Facebook encourages us to engage with other people and build friendships that make us feel secure. They have also given us many reasons to keep going back. Companies are going to have difficulty managing their staff who use these networks at work.

Do you actually have time to use all of these sites?

Yes and no. I use LinkedIn professionally to answer questions and del.icio.us to store and share my bookmarks. The others are all research tools and I am exploring those looking for commercial opportunities that might help my clients or lead to new exciting businesses. I do not use Facebook to play zombies.

Why do you think the companies behind them are worth so much money?

This is the nub of everything and in some senses some of them may be undervalued and some overvalued. We simply don’t know what they will be worth in the future but we have some clues. We know that any site that has very regular visitors has an advertising value (think Google). We know that that value increases as we are able to target ads more closely to particular audiences and we know that targeting becomes possible when we know a lot about each visitor. Think of the value to the supermarkets of their loyalty card data and I think you might understand what is happening.

What about all the other networks?

There are literally hundreds and I chose only those that are most in the news in the UK.

How much money are these networks actually making?

Today nothing or very little although they are often funded (with millions of dollars) through Venture Capital companies who want to sell the companies later. Some liked LinkedIn make money from advertising and jobs.

When does this module finish?

The teaching sessions stop in the middle of December and all the activities (10 in total) need to be finished by January.

How could we build our own social network?

You could use a social network building site such as Ning or build in PHP (or Ruby) from scratch. Your main problems will be offering unique services and marketing the networks to your audience. It might be better to focus on using the existing networks or considering specialist networks for ‘closed’ user communities.

Will all of these networks last or is this just a fad?

Another good question. I think that social networking is definitely here to stay (unless there is a major privacy scandal) and elements of this will be incorporated into lots of other online and mobile IT systems. Some of these particular networks may not last and some will merge. Take a look at Google’s Open Social initiative.

What are the real privacy risks?

The real risks are that people are lulled into giving away information that is then collected together to build an accurate picture of each consumer. Of course it is possible that pictures will turn up on other (pornographic) sites but this is possible anyway if you allow your picture to be taken anywhere. The bigger issues involve data aggregation.

Why wasn’t MySpace included in this activity?

No particular reason except that Facebook is growing faster and has this particularly important open application architecture. Facebook is more interesting from an IT point of view.

What do you think?

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