Tweeting Isn't Just for the Birds

Social Networking Explained

A Presentation by
Boise Public Library
09/01/2009

Presentation created using Google Docs

 Overview

1. What Is Social Networking?

2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin
3. Instant Information - Twitter
4. Video Sharing - YouTube
5. Photo Sharing - Flickr
6. Social Bookmarking - del.icio.us
7. Brave New World - Second Life
8. Fostering a Community - Ning
9. Social Good -  SixDegrees.org, TakingITGlobal, Care2, Idealist.org,
WiserEarth
10.Bringing It All Together - social aggregators
11.Privacy Concerns
1. What Is Social Networking

Web 2.0 - The Web as Participation/Internet Democracy

 
"Web 2.0 refers to web development and web design that facilitates interactive
information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the
World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services,
web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and
folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change
website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the
passive viewing of information that is provided to them."
 
Definition taken from Wikipedia.org
1. What Is Social Networking

A Selection of Web 2.0 Examples Include:

 
• Social Networking Sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn)
• Video and Photo Sharing Sites (YouTube, Flickr)
• Blogs (Huffington Post, Lifehacker, TMZ)
• Wikis (Wikipedia)
• Social Bookmarking (del.icio.us, Digg)
• Internet Radio (Pandora)
• RSS Feeds
• Open Source software
• Text and Video Chat (Skype, Meebo)
• Maps/Directions (MapQuest, Google Maps)
• Collaboration (Whiteboard, Google Docs)
• ...many many more
1. What Is Social Networking

Social Networking in Plain English

1. What Is Social Networking

PC Magazine defines a Social Network as:

"An association of people drawn together by family, work or hobby. The term was first coined by
professor J. A. Barnes in the 1950s, who defined the size of a social network as a group of about 100 to
150 people."
 
And defines a Social Networking Site as:
"A Web site that provides a virtual community for people interested in a particular subject or just to
'hang out' together. Members create their own online "profile" with biographical data, pictures, likes,
dislikes and any other information they choose to post. They communicate with each other by voice,
chat, instant message, videoconference and blogs, and the service typically provides a way for members
to contact friends of other members.

"Sites may also serve as a vehicle for meeting in person. The 'social networking site' is the 21st century
'virtual community,' a group of people who use the Internet to communicate with each other about
anything and everything. One can find dating sites, friendship sites, sites with a business purpose and
hybrids that offer a combination of these. Globally, hundreds of millions of people have joined one or
more social networking sites."
1. What Is Social Networking

In the Beginning
 
Introduced in 2002, Friendster (www.friendster.com) was the first social site, followed by MySpace
(www.myspace.com) a year later. Started by two friends, MySpace became extremely popular, and its
parent company, Intermix, was acquired by News Corporation for $580 million two years after MySpace
was launched. See MySpace.

Facebook (www.facebook.com) came out in 2004 initially targeting college students, but later welcoming
everyone (see Facebook). Following Facebook were TagWorld (www.tagworld.com) and Tagged
(www.tagged.com). TagWorld introduced tools for creating more personalized Web pages, and Tagged
introduced the concept of building tag teams for teens with like interests.

Social networking sites compete for attention much like the first Web portals when the Internet exploded
onto the scene in the mid-1990s. Variations are emerging all the time.
 
Source: PC Magazine
1. What Is Social Networking

Social Networking Statistics

Source: "Social Media Revolution" by Socialnomics09 video found on YouTube and Socialnomics.
 
• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network 
•  Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
• Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100
million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
• Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays
into this) 
• 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-
face instruction
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
• % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females

 
1. What Is Social Networking

Social Networking Statistics (cont.)

 
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and
Panama
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer
experiences?
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming
freshmen
• What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
• The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these
articles are non-English
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on
Facebook…daily.
1. What Is Social Networking

Chart Taken from Social Media Optimization website

1. What Is Social Networking

Advantages of Social Networking Sites

• Create and maintain many relationships
• Information comes to you
• Provides ability to participate and contribute
• Professional networking
• Promote issues important to you
 
Disadvantages of Social Networking Sites
• Lack of anonymity
• Scams
• Time consuming
• Predatory targeting
• Harassment and online bullying
2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin

The main types of social networking services are those which contain category
divisions (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect with
friends (usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system
linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook
widely used worldwide; MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn being the most widely
used in North America.
 
• Facebook - www.facebook.com
• MySpace - www.myspace.com
• LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com
 
2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

Facebook
Launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes
and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook from their Harvard dorm room. Facebook was
originally intended to connect university students but quickly spread throughout the
confines of campuses and now is the world's largest social networking site.
 
According to its website:
"Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more
open and connected.

"Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload an

unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people
they meet." 
2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

Facebook Statistics - gathered from Facebook website on 9/31/2009

 
General Growth
• More than 250 million active users
• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
User Engagement
• Average user has 120 friends on the site
• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
 
Applications
• More than 1 billion photos uploaded to the site each month (making it the largest photo-sharing service)
• More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
 
2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

Facebook Statistics (cont.)

 
International Growth
• More than 50 translations available on the site, with more than 40 in development
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Platform (Applications)
• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 350,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
 
Mobile
• There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 150 mobile operators in 50 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile
products
 
2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

MySpace
According to its website:
 
"MySpace is a technology company connecting people through personal expression,
content, and culture. MySpace empowers its global community to experience the
Internet through a social lens by integrating personal profiles, photos, videos, mobile,
messaging, games, and the world’s largest music community. MySpace is a division of
News Corporation."
• Launched in January 2004
• MySpace has nearly 130 million monthly active users around the globe
• MySpace has more than 70 million total unique users in the US
 
2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

LinkedIn - a site for creating professional relationships

 
According to the LinkedIn website:
"Your professional network of trusted contacts gives you an advantage in your career,
and is one of your most valuable assets. LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of
your professional network and help the people you trust in return. Our mission is to
connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. We
believe that in a global connected economy, your success as a professional and your
competitiveness as a company depends upon faster access to insight and resources you
can trust."
 
• LinkedIn has over 45 million members in over 200 countries and territories around
the world.
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our
members are outside the U.S.
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.
2. Connecting - Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

LinkedIn in Plain English

3. Instant Information - Twitter

Twitter in Plain English

 2. Instant Information - Twitter

Twitter
The following information was taken from the Twitter website:
 
Launched in 2006, Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple
networks and devices.
 
In countries all around the world, people follow the sources most relevant to them and access
information via Twitter as it happens—from breaking world news to updates from friends.
 
Twitter asks one question, "What are you doing?" Answers must be under 140 characters in length and
can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web.
 
Twitter's core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social
networking features. By accepting messages from sms, web, mobile web, instant message, or from
third party API projects, Twitter makes it easy for folks to stay connected.
 
Simply put, Twitter is what you make of it--receive a lot of information about your friends, or just a
tiny bit. It's up to you and your friends.
2. Instant Information - Twitter

5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good - from the article of the same name on Lifehack.org 
• Quick Human Answers- Ask folks on your friend’s list which digital camera to buy for under $300 US, and you’ll get back
a stream of responses.
• Conference / News Briefings- The last several major tech events were covered by Twitter. I heard about the Apple
iPhone faster through Twitter than I would via blog surfing. Similarly, I’ve watched people in San Francisco report
earthquakes that took news sources hours to confirm.
• Friendsourcing- Last Tuesday, I asked about a web designer for a project. I got back 14 emails in 10 minutes from
different sources on Twitter. It’s a great place to find folks to help with things. We once helped a friend out of a bind
when he got stuck at an airport, strictly by Twitter.
• Micro-Attention-Sharing- Lots of us use Twitter to direct folks to blog posts we’ve written, news we find needs sharing,
or entertaining things we’ve found on the web (Twitter has a built in function to use tinyurl.com to shrink URLs to keep
it under 140 characters). It’s *like* using del.icio.us to share, but it’s instant, and you wouldn’t drop 100 links on
someone in Twitter in a given day.
• Direct People to Good Causes- I’ve seen plenty of posts of someone doing a walk for hunger or a collection for diabetes.
Twitter allows people to use their friend lists to propagate that information faster, and try to draw more direct help
down to a problem.
• Bonus- As advertised, Twitter answers the question “What are you doing?” It means that you can stay in touch with
others without being intrusive. Just follow their twitters.
 
3. Instant Information - Twitter

Twitter Search in Plain English

4. Video Sharing - YouTube

YouTube - www.youtube.com
 
Overview and Features
Taken from the YouTube website
 
Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the world's most popular online video community, allowing
millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum
for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform
for original content creators and advertisers large and small.
 
YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the
Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail.
 
Everyone can participate in the YouTube community by watching, sharing, and commenting on videos.
People can see first-hand accounts of current events, relive their favorite TV moments, find videos
about their hobbies and interests, discover new artists and filmmakers, and even uncover the quirky
and unusual.
 
As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to share their
experiences, talents, and expertise with the world.
5. Photo Sharing - Flickr

Flickr - www.flickr.com
 
Flickr is a photo sharing website and web services suite, and an online
community platform, which is generally considered an early example of a  Web
2.0 application.
 
In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the
service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled
by its innovative online community tools that allow photos to be tagged and browsed
by folksonomic means.
 
According to the Flickr website, the site has two main goals:
1. To help people make their content available to the people who matter to them.
– To enable new ways of organizing photos and video.
 
 
5. Photo Sharing - Flickr

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

6. Social Bookmarking- del.icio.us

del.icio.us - www.delicious.com
 
What is social bookmarking?
"Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks
of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively
and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, "the process by
which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content".
Definition taken from Wikipedia.org
 
What is Delicious?
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages
from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves
how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.
 
Things you can do with Delicious
• Bookmark any site on the Internet, and get to it from anywhere
• Share your bookmarks, and get bookmarks in return
• Discover the most useful and interesting bookmarks on the web
6. Social Bookmarking- del.icio.us

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

7. Brave New World - Second Life

Second Life - www.secondlife.com

 
 A virtual world on the Internet from Linden Research, Inc., San Francisco, CA (www.lindenlab.com), in
which "residents" create an identity, meet people, buy land and build their own environment or
purchase an existing one. It is a "massively multiplayer online role playing game" (MMORPG), but one
that offers users total freedom to create and interact as if they were living another life. Playing the
game requires a client download for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Launched in 2003 by Philip Rosedale, alias Philip Linden in Second Life, first-time residents make up a
first name, choose a last name from a list and choose a graphic identity (an avatar). The name cannot
be changed, but the avatar can be. The Second Life world is a group of islands in the tropics. Using the
keyboard, one can move around at will and even fly over them. You can instantly teleport from one
location to another.
 
Definition from PC Magazine

 
8. Fostering a New Community - Ning

Ning - www.ning.com
 
The following description is taken from the Ning website:
 
Ning is the social platform for interests and passions online
 
Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Ning offers an easy-to-use technology platform enabling you to create and
join Ning Networks for your interests and passions.
 
With over 1.3 million Ning social networks created and more than 30 million registered members,
millions of people every day are coming together across Ning to explore and express their interests,
discover new passions, and meet new people around shared pursuits.
 
Ning also enables artists, brands and organizations to simplify and control their online presence with
their own unique Ning Network that beautifully integrates with other social media services while
providing the most direct, unique and lucrative relationship with fans, consumers and members.
9. Social Good - Examples

• SixDegrees.org - www.sixdegrees.org
• TakingITGlobal - www.takingitglobal.org
• Care2 - www.care2.org
• Idealist.org - www.idealist.org
• WiserEarth - www.wiserearth.org
 
10. Bringing It All Together - Social Aggregators

• Ping.fm - www.pingfm.com
• Second Brain - www.secondbrain.com
• Snag - http://www.dapper.net/dapplications/Snag/
11. Privacy & Security Concerns

General Rules of Thumb for Protecting Yourself Online

• Be Discreet
• Be Skeptical
• Be Thoughtful
• Be Professional
• Be Wary
• Check Privacy Policies
 
Here's some resources concerning protecting yourself on social networking sites:
• How to Protect Yourself on Social Networking Sites
• Social Networking Sites from www.onguardonline.gov
• Protect Yourself from Social Networking Scams
• How to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft on Facebook and Other Social
Networking Sites