Attention Grabber

Facebook is one of the most identifiable online social networks on college campuses because of its popularity among students.

The service recently announced that they had reached an astonishing 300 million active users of which, if combined worldwide, spend over six billion minutes on Facebook every day (Facebook Statistics). To put those numbers in a better perspective, that’s 100 million hours, or 11, 407.9553 years.

Relevance To Me

Social networking doesn’t only interest me because I’m a Computer Information Systems major, but I’m also a member of most of the larger social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

I’ve been on Twitter since the service started in early 2006, and throughout the past 3 years, I’ve seen first-hand the growth that Twitter has gone through.

Relevance to the Audience

College students rely on Facebook and social networks like it to connect with friends, family, and classmates to exchange information, chat, or just see what one another is currently doing.

We rely on these technologies a lot in our daily lives, but throughout our busy life, we never really take the time to understand the history and alternative uses of these services.

Thesis

There are three things that I would like to tell you more about today.

First, I would like to tell you about the history of social networks.

Second, I would like to give you some of the uses and potential uses of social networks.

I would then like to conclude with talking about how social networks have influenced our way of living.

The History of Online Social Networking

Definition of Online Social Network

According to Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison, authors of “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,” social networks must contain three elements in order to be named such. Those three elements are, “(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” (210-230).

All of the current social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace fall under these categories.

The History

The first website to launch with the specifications for a social network was called SixDegrees.com, which opened its virtual doors in 1997. The service was the first to combine the three social networking principles into one site.

For two years after SixDegrees’ start there wasn’t much innovation in the world of social networks, but in 2001, others sites like LiveJournal started cropping up soon after.

In late 2000 SixDegrees was forced to shut down because the service could not find a profitable and sustainable business model (Boyd, 210-230).

Social Networks Today

To make a social network profitable, today’s variations on SixDegrees.com rely on online advertising as a way to get money and support the service.

From first-hand experience I know that advertising in the online space is very profitable and allows these companies to pay the bills and not fall into the same situation that SixDegrees.com did in 2000.

Uses of Social Networks

Communication

Many people use social networks to communicate with their peers and people who they share common interests with.

Social networks allow people to share not only typed text with one another, but also multimedia in the form of photos and videos.

Marketing and Publicity

Companies like Microsoft and VMWare use social networks to promote their business, products, and services.

Social networks also allows companies to interact with their customers or potential customers through sites like Twitter

Microsoft, for instance, actually has four people who scour the social network looking for people with questions about their service, and they reply to as many of the comments as they can find.

People can also direct message or “at (@) reply” the Microsoft Twitter account to receive an almost instant response to questions about Microsoft products and services.

This type of company-customer interaction wasn’t easily doable before social networks like Twitter existed.

The Presidential Election

Presidential candidates for the 2008 election used social networking to the fullest extent possible to gain supporters.

Hillary Clinton was the first to do this by frequently uploading campaign videos, holding virtual town meetings, and friending many people on Twitter and Facebook.

When Barack Obama announced that he would be running for president, his campaign website boasted a list of social networks that you could follow him on. Since his election, many of the government websites, including the FCC have listed social network accounts that allow you to follow their progress via Twitter and Facebook .

Doctors and the Social Web

Doctors are not about to be left out of the social networking boom. According to the Health Affairs journal, a few health providers have taken to the social network as a way to spread medical help to patients who need at home attention (Hawn, 361-368).

“Many health professionals began thinking about using Twitter when the swine flu outbreak hits in April” (Kleffman).

Social Networks and Our Way of Living

Communicating Our Lives

Social networks give us a voice online that allows us to communicate in almost real-time with other people that share similar interests.

This instant access to people to talk with gives us a sense of community that could not be reached before the evolution of the social network.

Tweeting Important Events

When people first heard about the death of Michael Jackson, many turned to Twitter and in a matter of minutes, the social network was bogged down with traffic and the site failed.

Being able to broadcast not only what we are doing, but also our experiences in important or historical events is one of the uses of today’s social networks.

In January when the U.S. Airways plane crashed into the cold Hudson River in New York, bystander Janis Krums was the first to broadcast the event. Before the news reporters could get to the crash, Krums had already propagated the story and photo to his Twitter friends from his iPhone at the scene. The photo was then viewed almost 40,000 times over the course of four hours (Marrone).

Social networks today help to spread news quicker than ever before and allow almost immediate access to on-site “citizen journalists.”

Education in Social Media

Universities have started opening doors to the possibilities of social networking. Even USC Upstate uses Twitter and Facebook to spread news about campus activities.

Birmingham City University in England, however, is currently offering a Master’s Degree in Social Media (“A Master of Social Networking”).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I’ve discussed with you the history of social networks, the uses of social networks, and the changes social networking has brought our lives.