Social Network Sites

[1]

On 4 February, Our Senior, grad student shared us about Social Network; Definition of Social Network Sites, A History and Previous Scholarship. Then, I also will share you! 🙂

Social Network Sites such as MySpace, Facebook have millions of user. Many of them are in people daily life. There are various technologies that support a wide range of interests. Technological features are quite similarly, but the culture that comes out around them is difference.

What is Social Network Sites?

Social network sites(SNSs) as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a provided system. Users can share a connection with another.

For joining SNSs, an individual is asked to fill in informations to generate his profile, such  as age, location, interests, profile picture. Users also can identify friends that they have a  relationship. Most SNSs is bi-directional for Friendship but some SNSs are one-directional ties that are sometimes labeled as “Followers.

A History

• Early year social Network Sites

Social network site launched in 1997.

1997, SNSs allowed users to create profiles and list their Friends. For example, AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of Friends, although that Friend was not visible to others.

1997 to 2001, Social Network Sites began to support various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends. They allow users to create personal, professional and dating profiles. Users can list friends and identify them on their personal profiles.

In 2001, the next wave of SNSs began. Ryze.com was launched to help people leverage their business networks.

In the end, Ryze is not popular. LinkedIn became a powerful business service, and Friendster became the most important SNS.

•  The Rise of Friendster

Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze.com. It was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that friends-of-friends would be better partners than strangers would. In early, it is popular in site—bloggers, people who joined the Burning Man arts festival, and gay men. Later, it grew rapidly to 300,000 users in 2003.

• A Global Phenomenon

Social Network Sites widespreaded over the world. For example, MySpace was attractive for media attention in the U.S. Friendster came to popular in Pacific Islands. Hi5 grew in Latin America, South America and Europe. etc.

• Expanding Niche Communities

Most SNSs focus on growing broadly, but some SNSs focus on narrower audiences that restrict people to access it.

• BeautifulPeople : Online Dating Service
• Couchsurfing : Host Exchange
• MyChurch : Christian Community

Previous Scholarship

SNSs is used freely to accessible profile data. Their targets were much more likely to give away information to this “friend” than to a perceived stranger. Currently, teenagers are aware of potential privacy threats online and try to protect the risk.

Example of privacy resarch

• 1st Research 2006 : Child privacy
• Barne 2006 : Privacy Paradox

If you want more information, come to link below[link [2]]. On link, it is a reserch of Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship by danah m. boyd and Nicole B. Ellison. Thanks for visited. 

Related link :

[1] http://www.brightlemon.com/news/net-magazine-features-brightlemon-article

[2] http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html#previous