Transcript Introduction to Social Network Sites

Introduction to Social Network
Sites
CSC8008
Dr. Rob Comber
Aims
• Over the next two weeks
– Basics of social network sites
• What defines social network sites?
• Who uses them? How much? What do they do?
– Analysing social networks
• Perspectives – social capital vs. social support,
persuasion, marketing and social contagion
• Community vs. networks
• Methods – qualitative vs. quantitative
A redundant introduction?
• In all likelihood you have visited a social
network site in the last week, day or hour
– 1 in 5 hours spent on the internet in the UK is
spent on Social Network sites (SNSs)
Who here use a social network site?
• What are the most popular?
• What websites do you use that aren’t SNSs?
SNS vs. others
SNS
Facebook
Twitter
Not SNS
BBC
Blackboard?
Defining SNSs
• Lots of sites recognised as SNSs are available
–But what makes a SNS a SNS?
• Get into groups of 3 and discuss.
–Write a short description of a
‘generic’ SNS
A brief history…
• The history of SNSs is not very well defined
• No clear ‘origin’
• 1997: SixDegrees first SNSs (as we might recognise
them now) is launched
• 1999: The features became incorporated in other
services, such as the blogging platform, LiveJournal.
• 2000: SixDegrees closes
• 2001: CyWorld, a Korean SNS, is launched (and still
going strong)
• 2002: Friendster, the first widely popular American SNS,
is launched
• 2003: LinkedIn, MySpace, Last.FM and other ‘interestbased’ SNSs launch
• 2004: Facebook launches as a Harvard only SNS
• 2006: marks the launch of Twitter and the opening up
of Facebook to everyone
Defining social network sites
• The most widely accepted paper on the history and
definition of SNSs, defines them as “web-based
services that allow individuals 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”
•
boyd, and Ellison, 2007. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
What do these mean?
• “construct a public or semi-public profile
within a bounded system”
– How do we ‘construct’?
– Public/semi-public? But not private?
– Within a bounded system?
Constructing
• ‘Construct’ usually means to build from the
bottom up
– But on SNSs, it usually means something more like
“fill in the blanks”
– But this has been one of the big differences
between sites
• What does the user “construct”?
MySpace vs. Facebook
Public/semi-public
• Most SNSs have some features to limit the
availability of your profile/data
– But are usually based on you opting out of making
your profile public
• More important than this is the idea of which
publics you want to address
– Who are the publics we address?
Bounded system
• What does this mean?
– SNSs are ‘bounded’ be their domain address
– But we interact with people outside of those
• E.g. Face-to-face, but also on other sites (e.g. Like
button)
– What binds the system/users?
Working backwards
• Bounded system -> publics -> constructing.
• Bounded system of Social Network Sites is...
– The Social Network
Social Network theory
• Social networks describe the people in a
network and the relationships between them
– People are nodes
– Relationships are ties
A simple network
Node
C
Weak tie
Strong tie
Node
B
A
Node
Strong tie
A knows B, and B knows C. A and C are connected through their relationship to B.
Draw your own social network
• Get a piece of paper and spend 5 minutes
drawing your own social network
A more complex social network
• What did your social network drawing end up
looking like?
– Where did you put yourself?
– How did you show the relationships between you
and others?
– Did you differentiate between groups of people?
– How did you show who you were close to?
Some example diagrams
Small/personal
Corporate/Hierarchical
Organisation/Hierarchical
Social networks
• Social networks are evident in all social
interactions
– We can examine organisations, corporations,
families, neighbourhoods, cities, clubs…
• Just about anything as a social network
Family tree
Organisation
• Do you think this describes any real company?
• Or a family tree really describes how a family
interacts?
From structure to publics
• The structures create opportunities for publics
– Bob knows everybody
• And is connected to everybody
– Andrew only knows Bob
• So only Bob should see his information
• Do you agree?
Publics
• Even if Andrew only knows Bob, he is present
on Bob’s profile - in his friend list, and so on.
• Therefore, some of Andrew’s data is made
public to people he doesn’t know
– And there is no real way to limit that, except not
to connect with anyone (a private profile isn’t a
social profile)
Features of SNS ties
• Social network ties are:
– Public
• Your ties to others are visible to an unknown ‘networked public’
– Mutual
• When you connect to someone, they connect to you
– There are no ‘one-sided’ ties
– Decontextualised
• It doesn’t matter if you are a colleague, a friend, an aunt – you are connected
in the same network
– Univariate
• Again, it doesn’t matter if you are my best friend, or someone I met at a party
four years ago, you are still my ‘Friend’ – there are only two levels of
connection – on and off.
– Donath and boyd, 2004
Social network ties
• When I connect with someone:
• Others can see it (public)
• The person I connect to, is connected to me
(mutual)
• It doesn’t matter who I am connecting to, it is
shared all the same (decontextualised)
• It is the same as every other tie I have
(univariate)
A
B
E
D
A
C
B
Social network ties
• Get into groups of 3. Discuss:
– What consequences might there be from all social
network ties being public?
– Why does it matter that my relationships don’t
have the background information with them?
– And that they are not expressed in a way that uses
the contextual information?
Why do people use SNSs?
• There a plenty of reasons to use SNSs
– And they depend largely on what SNS you are
talking about
– So let’s pick one…
– Facebook
SNS = Facebook?
• “in April 2011 Facebook was visited by 24.8
million UK internet users, more than six times
as many visitors as to the second most-visited
site, Twitter.” - OfCom
• More than 90% of social networking time is
spent on Facebook
• Facebook has dominated the SNS space, and
many would consider it the only SNS worth
developing for, analysing, or using.
Growth across demographics
AB: upper-middle/middle class, C1: lower middle, C2: skilled working, D: semi-/unskilled E: retired/unemployed
Cross-cultural?
• But SNS use is extremely cultural
– Have you heard of Qzone? Habbo? Renren?
– How about Orkut? Vkontakte? CyWorld? Hi5?
• Orkut belongs to Google, but has only become
popular in India and Brazil
– So they’ve launched Google+ to the rest of the
world
Why use Facebook?
• Joinson (2008)
• Two part study – first part, 137 users (88
female, mean age=26.3)
• What is the first thing that comes to mind
when you think about what you enjoy most
when using Facebook?
Uses and gratifications (Joinson,2008)
Theme
Number of mentions
‘Keeping in touch’
Contacting friends who are away from home
Chatting to people I otherwise would have lost contact with
52
Passive contact, social surveillance
Virtual people-watching.
19
‘Re-acquiring lost contacts’
Finding people you haven't seen for a while
15
‘Communication’
Being poked
Private messages
Writing on walls
15
Photographs
Tagged in picture
Posting and Sharing pictures
11
Design related
Ease of use
4
Perpetual contact
Seeing what people have put as their 'status'
Seeing what my friends have been up to today
4
‘Making new contacts’
Talking to singles
Joining groups
5
Study 2
• 241 participants
• Based on previous study:
• “How important are the following uses of
Facebook to you personally?’
• 1 (very unimportant) to 7 (very important).
Factors of Facebook gratification
• Social connections - Finding out what old friends are
doing now
• Shared identities - Joining groups, events
• Photographs
• Content - Applications within Facebook, games, quizzes
• Social investigation - Virtual people watching
• Social network surfing - Viewing other people’s friends
• Status updates
Predicting use - frequency
• Women logged in more often
• Based on the 7 gratifications
– Those more interested in photographs and status
updates logged in more often
– Those interested in social investigation logged in
marginally more often
Predicting use - length
• Younger people spend longer online
• Only content gratification predicted more
lengthy use
– May be inherent in the time taken to play games,
quizzes, etc.
Predicting use – number of friends
• Younger people have more friends
• People who are registered for longer, or who
visit more often have more friends
• People more interested in content had less
friends
• People with higher score on social
investigation had more friends
Users vs. Non-users
• Ofcom carried out qualitative analysis of users
and non-users
Users
• 5 categories of users
– Alpha Socialisers (a minority) – people who used sites in intense
short bursts to flirt, meet new people, and be entertained.
– Attention Seekers – (some) people who craved attention and
comments from others, often by posting photos and
customising their profiles.
– Followers – (many) people who joined sites to keep up with
what their peers were doing.
– Faithfuls – (many) people who typically used social networking
sites to rekindle old friendships, often from school or university.
– Functionals – (a minority) people who tended to be singleminded in using sites for a particular purpose.
Non-users
• 3 categories
– Concerned about safety – people concerned about
safety online, in particular making personal details
available online.
– Technically inexperienced – people who lack
confidence in using the internet and computers.
– Intellectual rejecters – people who have no interest in
social networking sites and see them as a waste of
time.
Where do you fit?
• And of what interest is that position to
others?
– Advertising?
– Recruitment?
– University?
Next week
• We will be looking at how we can begin to
analyse social network sites
– Networks vs. communities
– Persuasion, marketing and social contagion
– Social capital vs. social support