Social Networking INFSCI 2000 Final Project


Adam Niederle


What is Social Networking?


"Any website designed to allow multiple users to publish content themselves. The information may be on any subject and may be for consumption by (potential) friends, mates, employers, employees, etc. The sites typically allow users to create a "profile" describing themselves and to exchange public or private messages and list other users or groups they are connected to in some way. There may be editorial content or the site may be entirely user-driven. Content may include text, images (e.g. (http://flickr.com/)), video (e.g. (http://youtube.com/)) or any other media.
Social networks on the the web are a natural extension of mailing lists and buletin boards. They are related to wikis like (http://wikipedia.org/) but typically do not allow users to modify content once it has been submitted, though usually you can publish comments on others' submissions. Different sites have different emphasis.
For example, (http://friendsreunited.co.uk/) (one of the earliest such sites) focusses on listing former acquaintances; (http://myspace.com/) is music-oriented; (http://linkedin.com/) aims to connect business partners; (http://del.icio.us/), (http://stumbleupon.com/) and (http://digg.com/) are for exchanging links to favouirite web sites.
There are many more. Sometimes the social aspects are a side-effect of bringing together people with shared interests, e.g. (http://slashdot.org/) (IT), other times they become more important than the original purpose, e.g. (http://worldofwarcraft.com/) (fantasy gaming)."


Definition from:
(social network. (n.d.). The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.
Retrieved December 12, 2011, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/social network)



What Has Made Social Networking Possible?


Consider this: "The Sims", released for PC in 2000, could run on a computer with a 233MHz CPU and 32 MB of RAM (source: The Sims).

The Samsung Galaxy S II, a cell phone released this year, has a dual core cpu that runs at 1.2 GHz and has a gigabyte of RAM (source:Samsun Galaxy S II).

In a phenomenon which has been dubbed "Moore's Law", the amount of transistors able to be placed on an integrated circuit tends to double every two years by way of
technological advancement. In the 90s, many people used the internet for the first time in their lives on machines less powerful than our mobile phones
and through dial-up internet services that ran slower than our wireless cell-networks do now. Many students currently in high school
have likely grown up having internet access in their homes as far back as they can remember.

In addition to cell phones having greater computing power, they also have a wider array of features, such as still-photo and video capabilities, and GPS locating.
As a result, users are able to connect to social networking sites on an almost constant basis and can share media without ever accessing a laptop or desktop computer.
This allows for information to spread much quicker and likely causes an exponential increase in social networking.

Additionally, changes in programming languages have made it easier for users to share content through social networking sites and upload their own.
A few years back, "web 2.0" was used to describe the phenomena of user-generated content for site, though now that term is being replaced with "social networking".
Web 2.0 vs Social Networking


Above: graph showing the trend known as Moore's Law

Societal Impact


Negative:
-Although rather subjective, it could be considered negative that once information is online and being shared through social networking, it is near impossible to stop its spread and doing so often causes it to spread even further. This has been dubbed the Streisand Effect. On the other hand, depending on what is being suppressed, this may be seen as a good thing.

-Effect on memory: there are studies that now suggest our reliance on Google and the internet for information may be affecting the way we depend on transactive memory.

Positive:
-A level playing field: Users essentially have the same oppurtunities as one another in social networking. Musicians can share their work without a record label, artists can share drawings, etc.

-Important information: Emergency information can spread far faster than conventional means. For instance, tweets about the east coast earthquake were often received before the quake was felt.

-Revolution: Social networking can allow for the spread of information amongst protestors in countries where such communication would otherwise prove difficult, if not deadly.


-from http://xkcd.com/723/




From Egypt to Wall Street, this year's protests have used social network sites to disperse information and communicate.
Time's Person of the Year 2011

What's Next?



My prediction for the development of social networking in the next few years can be summarized as such: interconnectivity.

Sites such as twitter now allow for connections with facebook accounts so that users can update one site and have it affect the other. Rather than managing accounts for a half-dozen different sites, it seems likely that in the next few years there will be an increasing number of sites piggy-backing off of facebook. This way, rather than bothering users to create new accounts, other sites such as last.fm will be able to simply ask possible new users if they'd like to sign in with their facebook accounts. This streamlines social networking and users wouldn't have to worry about finding and adding their friends over and over again each time they join a new social networking site. Rather, their current facebook data would carry over. Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site in the U.S. and conveniences such as this will likely cement it in first place. Attempts such as google+ to surpass facebook will likely be met with failure as they offer nothing substantially new. Even facebook incorporates certain aspects of competing social sites. For instance, facebook now allows users to "follow" other popular users, much in the manner of twitter. It seems like this trend will continue and that many users will eventually spend entire browsing sessions where they are connected through facebook to nearly every page they visit.
The Facebook Platform will become see increasing use.