Social Networking: A Research Paper

Here is an "update paper" on the role and future of social networking I wrote for a communications and technology course in the summer of 2011. Please do not plagiarize. 

I. Introduction

            In 1989, Internet was made available to the public. One of the biggest phenomenon’s in mankind, the Internet opened up the accessibility of information to people that they could not have gotten if they spent every moment of their lives in a library or watching television. There is now a plethora of information that has gone viral. A similar marvel has happened with online social networking in terms of the possibility of creating and maintaining relationships; no amount of time traveling or making phone calls can compete. Social networking is the procedure of communicating information with others and building relationships. Humans are by nature social beings and it was only a matter of time until the World Wide Web was seen as a useful way for people find not only information but also other people. Social media is becoming dominant in culture and business, but social networking is more specific.
            Social networking is usually set up on websites, which are usually catered just for finding others and communicating with them. These websites revolve around a login system where users have their own profiles that can contain personal information, activities, screen names, and photos. Traditional sites have open memberships, where anyone can join as well as free of charge. The purpose of these sites are for users to be able to find people of the past, distance, or similar interests as well as people you might see everyday and effortlessly update them on your life and ideas. The top social networking sites are very broad in terms of networking and a user can join groups and channels to make it more particular on their own accord. Some of the smaller sites are more niche and outfit to more specific needs and interests right off the bat such as dating, music, gossip, and profession, but as people seek gratification they are becoming more popular following the “Long Tail Theory”. Over the years social networking has become more advanced in possibilities of sharing, but also become more user-friendly. The storing of personal information is easy as well as storing it. With the click of a button, users can view others profiles, upload pictures and video, and write messages (instant and non-instant) to others. Many of these sites also have friend systems where users are connected with others on a more permanent level and others can see their lists. People not only get to stay in contact with their loved ones but have a virtual long term memories and can look back several years and physically see change.

II. Background
Social Networking could never been possible without the Internet. In fact it really can be stemmed back to the mail system, telegraph, and telephone. But computers are the only things this far that have connected people in great distance to be able to communicate information with one or more people instantly. The roots of social networking beginning with computers however, can be seen before the Internet was available to the public. During the 1970’s when computers were not personal and mainly used for government and corporate use, the system of networking computers to a main computer or server was created with CompuServe Networks, Inc. (Sauerbier, 2010). Finally computers and the Internet were personalized and the eventual arrival of social networking sites moved swiftly. Emails were being sent with an unlimited amount of receivers with instant messaging following. Websites began allowing bulletins and discussion threads and soon pages were designed around the user entirely. Friendster, created in 2002, and MySpace, created in 2003, were the most known to thrive in the new world social networking.  However, Myspace won over Friendster as they slowly lost users, especially after news came out that Friendster was maybe going to start subscription fees. Web 2.0 was the foundation for these sites that centered on the user allowing multiple sharing abilities. It is used in many web-building frameworks such as Java Script and Adobe Flash. MySpace even let users experienced with HTML design their own profiles. These websites also have to have temporary but large storage and bandwidth for all the information. However, even after Fox spent millions investing in MySpace, the flashiness and non user-friendly system of MySpace wore off as less complicated, college student created platform Facebook in 2004, and took the spotlight. With its own Application Programming Interface (API) and real time, “newsfeed” and “tagging” became household terms. The constitution and the government have already had to take a dip in the complicated matters of social networking. Legalities of freedom of speech, privacy, and security have been debated over by many. In fact, some government officials have been banned to use them at all while others are trained to scout out predators like the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (Sauerbier, 2010). Public politics such as presidential campaigns have used social networking for success as well as humor.
            However, social networking is truly not all fun and games. In a world of pop culture where sells and image is everything, representing yourself in the public can cause problems and many people not only are skeptical of becoming a user but the morality of social network has been criticized as well. Most of the social networking websites are not 100 percent open networking sites because of memberships, API protocols, and ability to change privacy settings as well as supplying terms of agreement policies at sign up. Facebook also has to abide by the law. Bruce from Wired Magazine states, “Facebook's privacy policy states that outside companies sponsoring groups don't have access to personal information or profiles. However, it does say that information may be shared with "other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies". While demographics and interests are valuable information for companies, there are more harmful people being able to collect even more personal knowledge. Privacy is also a physical safety issue with sites like these because of pedophiles and stalkers. Another problem is taking others photos and putting them on gossip sites to humiliate people. Cyber-bullying has been a very negative and sad unanticipated impact especially involving youths. New generations get more tech savvy but bullying and self-esteem issues will most likely continue to be prevalent due to the media in general.
            Social networking sites clusters of free speech as well, which means profanity and explicit or other societal deemed inappropriate material such as photos are available for viewing; in fact, research found that 47 percent of Facebook users have profanity on their profiles (Wasserman, 2011). This has caused a large commotion in the realm of employment. Many have either lost their jobs or failed to land a job because of employers taking peeks at their profiles. Social networking on the job has also created problems and data has shown that those who do have productivity decrease of 1.5 percent (Gaudin, 2009). Research has also been conducted of the effects social networking, not only physical effects (such as the amygdala size of the brain increasing) but also personality disorders like narcissism and behavior problems such as addiction.
            As a multi-billion dollar industry, social networking has changed relationships, lifestyles, language and even other industries especially music and marketing. Social networking encompasses the most visited sites on the web with 79 percent desktop and 91 percent mobile users taking part (Owyang, 2010). Facebook has reached over 600 million members this year alone (Hill, 2011). Music can easily be can streamed and shared with others, which positively affect it by promotion unlike sites, that allow illegal downloading. Business has changed drastically from turning their pockets away from traditional advertising to cheaper non-traditional advertising over the Internet, which gets more eyes.
            Over time, businesses have posted their ads on the tops, bottoms, and sides of these social networking sites but have now also become gone past this still traditional method of advertising. Businesses now have their own accounts and pages on the social networking sites and promote from there. For some companies it is not even necessary to have a personal paid for website if their Facebook page is successful. Facebook allows business profiles to be more custom designed and interactive than individuals. Companies can market discounts, promotions, and new inventory faster than ever with these sites. With mobile social networking apps, customers can show certain messages when they enter a store or “check in” to instantly receive their special deal. Social Networking sites have been caught as perfect implements to enhance consumerism with the ability to analyze users’ demographics and behavior. Many of these companies have Analyzing Apps where bigger corporations hire people to do it for them. Apps, or applications, are also a new and successful instrument for businesses. They can build one for a social networking site or have a mobile one that connects with the users social network profile. These apps range anywhere from shopping to weather to games. The new world of social media is not only providing directed consumerism but new jobs as well.

III. Recent Developments

The past year of social networking has followed the flow of the rest of the digital world; it increased in a spectrum of areas. In fact, this June 30^th, will be the first day attributed to Social Media. It was only a matter of time seeing as though social networking now adheres to the most traffic on the Internet, which was for many years help by pornography. Whether or not social networking is a fad, the past 12 months were busy, for some more than others. Major reasons for this boost however really boiled down to two things, the new hardware of smart phones and tablets and software such as applications (apps). Over 47 percent of smart phone users spend time social networking on them (emarketer, 2011). Apps, although not new, increased to the millions with every category and for all ages, especially since many apps are free or have trial versions. While many people use their apps for pure entertainment a big need for them was by businesses.

            Location, location, location. Where a person is in the world can now make a big difference, whether it is to let others know or redeem special offers by businesses. The archetype of success for location-based services was FourSquare, which is still very successful. In August of 2010, Facebook built their own platform of location intelligence, which they identify as “checking-in”, is called Places. This service not only is for social purposes to let friends know where you are and who you are with but Facebook opened the platform to thousands of businesses By July 2010 Facebook had over five million users and ended the year with an added million and is the fourth largest site on the Internet. Third party apps are showing huge success as well as industry advances. Apps like Friendster let you know whom you are around at an event and let you add them on Facebook. Meeting and maintaining friends continues to get easier especially if you bad at remembering names. Location in the past year has become a useful tool for users and the consumer world. Analysts have begun to overlook the power of photography being used in social networking and are using the two together.

            Businesses continued to take advantage of social networking with “gamification” and consumer rating systems. Gamification is having apps based around the business that are fun and have more interaction, which create better word of mouth and brand loyalty. Some companies have teamed up with Facebook to use ratings systems in which the higher the rating, the more special deals are available to that user. By the end of 2010, advertisers had spent around 200 billion dollars on social network sites. Analysts and companies have also realized the power of photography and its use of social networkers. One ground breaking app, Color, which was just released takes location and photography and combines them to create a linear and multimedia represented experience had by multiple people. It is able to sync people in certain proximity and send all of their photos and videos to the web without having to upload (Bashmashnikov, 2011). Photo sharing is becoming more seamless and social and will grow in the end of 2011 and into 2012.

            A similar breakthrough in technology for social networking was facial recognition.  The implementing of this caused 2011 for Facebook to be exceptional and troubling. The face recognizing software helped in the very time consuming but ever so important photo tagging of friends.  However the Electronic Privacy Information Center found it to invade privacy and filed a complaint with the FTC (Adhikari, 2011). No settlement has been reached but Facebook does have a privacy option to disable their face to be recognized. Privacy in terms of minors is still also an unsettled problem for Facebook and other social network sites. Facebook increased privacy settings especially with apps who were forcing users to accept to them accessing more than just basic information but control over their profiles.  Facebook’s Privacy Policy exceeds the Constitution in length (IACP Center for Social Media, n.d). In the past year, Facebook also changed its platform for developers from their own version of html (fbml) to iframe, which caused users who managed fan pages to make changes. It also made the site a secure network (http to https). For fan page administrators Facebook added insights or analytics to see how many people their content was reaching and how many were providing feedback. For regular users, Facebook merged their message and chat features so that when a person signs off of chat, an instant message can still be sent to them. Along with this, the histories of conversations were lengthened and restored making past conversations able to view again.  A possible major addition for Facebook may be its alliance with Warner Bros. The two have joined and implemented video streaming for movies on the website using Facebook Credits, which this far had only been used for games and apps.  The companies decided on trial running with The Dark Knight, but it will take some time for Facebook’s software and hardware to compete with Netflix.

This past year social networks grew with each other. Other social networking sites’ improvements included Twitter lengthening their character number allowance for a tweet. During the Presidential Speech addressing the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, tweets per minute topped 4,000 (LA Times, 2011). LinkedIn went public this May, being the first of the big Social Networks to offer stocks to the public. The first day was Internet initial Public Offerings only and sold “7.84 million shares at $45 each” (Spiegel, 2011). Google is Facebook's rival even though their social attempt at Buzz has been quite unsucccessful. They then came out with a less active addition, a “+1” button that has similar qualities to Facebook's “Like” button but is currently available to Gmail account users. (PR Newswire, 2011).

IV. Current Status

The use of Internet and social networking is on the rise as Internet access, smartphones, and overall awareness increase.  In fact, accounts for social network sites have exceeded the amount of people there are in the world. Although more than half of these accounts are not active, the fact that people are spending their time to make potential online clusters of information for social reasons shows we live in an ultramodern world.  While Facebook alone has beat Google in number of hits, one out of every six minutes is consumed by social network sites on the Internet by over half of people with web access (Nelms, 2011). Online interaction seems like a past time for the new generations, however, surprisingly the adoption of social network sites has gone up rapidly among older adults and women.

Note. From "Social networking sites and our lives," by K.N Hampton, L.S Goulet and L. Rainie 2011, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, p. 9.

After two years, the end of 2010 saw an increase of 30 percent for people over 35 years old.  More and more rapidly, people are being friend requested by grandparents, past teachers, and friends’ parents.  Aside from LinkedIn, women now dominate the social networking world as well, making up 56 percent. While only 8 percent of Internet users in America belong to Twitter, visitors of over 50 years old increased 65 percent with males and 96 percent with females (Shearman, 2011). For Facebook and Twitter, the age group 18-34 is still the highest. “The average adult MySpace user is younger (32), and the average adult LinkedIn user older (40), than the average Facebook user (38), Twitter user (33), and users of other SNS users (35)” (Hampton, Goulet, Rainie, 2011).

Niche sites are becoming more popular everywhere on the web including social networking sites and have had nearly a 50 percent increase in unique visitors from March 2011 to June 2011. However, the industry revolves around the top dogs still which account for almost 80 percent of visitors as well as continuous increases in unique visitors (Nelms, 2011). Facebook and Twitter are the two most used social network sites, but it is safe to say Facebook is king of the industry. Facebook users’, (over 600 million), monthly interaction on the site has increased 1.7 hours since June of 2010. As of May 2011, Facebook has had over 3 trillion visitors and 142,666,563 unique visitors (Complete, Inc.) However, the other big players in the game are proving to stay successful as well. LinkedIn had a nearly 60 percent increase in a year while Tumblr grew 166 percent. Myspace has continued to loose users and is also the site with most users of low income.

            Social Networks sites, while most are free to be a member of, are bringing in big revenue with advertisers and their users even in a tough economy. In 2010, 2 billion dollars were spent by advertisers while gaming and virtual goods helped to bring the industry 7 billion dollars. By the end of 2011 it is predicted that over 3 billion dollars will be spent by advertisers and total advertising spending on these networks worldwide will be around 6 billion dollars. Around half of this expenditure will go to the king, Facebook (Chukumba, 2011). Other revenue for these sites come from people paying for apps, games and other goods while some businesses may pay extra to improve their pages, although average Facebook users spend less than 50 dollars a year on games featured on the site.

Before advertisements helped cash flow of the top dogs, private investors backed up their financial needs. LinkedIn recently went public ending its first day pricing the company at 8.9 billion dollars. Facebook is counting on attaining over 500 investors this year, which means it will have to give out information on the company’s finances to the Securities and Exchange Commission by April 2012. For their sake, Facebook will most likely follow LinkedIn and have an Internet Public Offering before their information is made public. Facebook was appraised at 50 billion dollars in the first month of 2011 and is estimated to be worth twice the amount when they go public (Kelley, 2011). Myspace, after being sold to NewsCorp in 2005 and had a spiraled down in the industry, is being sold for a second time to Specific Media who is an ad-targeting firm. The cost of the sale will be 35 million dollars, 545 million dollars less than what NewsCorp bought it for (Steel 2011).

V. Factors to Watch

             Social networking isn’t dying anytime soon. It seems ridiculous to try to imagine what else can be thought up of, who else can compete with Facebook, and how much mobile we can make ourselves. Social Networking is what its in the name, networking. Sites already integrate with each other to bring all of a person’s activity together and are creating relationships with other players in the media world. While Facebook works on offering movies, Social TV will most likely be widely used soon.  It is a simple concept of recommendation, which is already widely in effect where social profiles will be connected to a persons cable/satellite account. Another concept is users receiving ad revenue for putting content out on the Internet. Businesses are going to continue reaping benefits off the high volume of accessible consumers and their demographic information. With real time being a support for social networking, it will also help businesses work faster and provide better customer support. Video chat will also appear soon especially for Facebook and users will be able to have face to face chats with almost every one they know, assuming the user has a webcam. Virtual Reality will also mature as video games and social networking grow closer. The use of smart phones is going to keep increasing and location based services will also advance and join forces, like they are already doing with photo sharing and friend requesting.

            The future holds a lot of promise for the entire media industry as social networking continues to bloom. Soon to hit the scene will be a launch of the number one followed person on Twitter, pop star Lady Gaga. She is working on Backplane with Eric Schmidt of Google, which will be a social networking site for musicians and celebrities. Facebook has not taken a full plunge into the music business, whereas Myspace, once on top as a pure social network, is now focused towards the music industry. Myspace may be getting another hard hit soon with the release of Backplane. Google will try again at becoming a social networking giant as Facebook tries to conquer other aspects of the Tnternet.

            Social Network has hit the world like a hurricane. While some say social networking is a fad, the combination of algorithms and need for personal relationships is about to reach its 10^th birthday and will continue to expand like wild fire. Billions of people spend almost everyday logging on while billions of dollars are being spent on research and advertising. People are proving that social networking increases connections, helps them be more sociable and trusting, be diversified, and even participate in politics. The world is growing smaller everyday while conversations, ideas, and technologies grow limitless.

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