Conclusion
Social Networking sites have been a great invention. Many people engage in these sites and help our busy lives socialize at a quick pace. The fact that one can interact and socialize on a personal level through these sites really draws people into them. These sites have evolved communication, it is now done through the internet. Statistics show that millions of people sign up for these sites and interact on them. It has become a world-wide phenomenon and will be around for years to come.
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Content Essay
The first actual Social Networking sites was a site called SixDegrees. Its content allowed users to create profiles, list their friends, and surf their friends lists. This was a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others. Although SixDegrees was the first running SNS, it was not the most successful. Due tp the fact that it was launched when internet was not as popular, many people could not find friends to connect with.
Today social networking sites have become such a popular fad. People go on these types of sites daily. The content of these sites have changed greatly. Users not only can make a list of friends, they can comment on others walls, create photo albums and tag the people who are in them, post links to their pages, and so much more. Sites such as Facebook have now become part of a majority social lives. Over thousands of people log into Facebook more than twice a day.
In many ways social networking sites have become more popular than phone calls. Instead of calling some one they message them through a social networking site such as Facebook. Because the content of these sites have changed, more people have signed up for them. These site are popular world-wide and have made socializing more convenient then ever to connect to someone on a personal level.
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work sited
“BEWARE: Social Networking Sites and the Law.” Web. 19 Dec 2009. <http://www.nacollawfirmblog.com/family-law/beware-social-networking-sites-and-the-law>.
boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.
boyd, danah. (2007) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.”MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
“legal cases from Facebook usage rise.” November 30, 2009. Web. 19 Dec 2009. <http://www.itnewsafrica.com/?p=3380>.
“One in Four Online Users Visit Social-Networking Sites.” 6/18/08. Web. 19 Dec 2009. <http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/one-in-four-online-users-visit-social-networking-sites-4980/>.
“Mark Zuckerberg.” Web. 19 Dec 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
| Roos, Dave. “How Social Networks Work.” Web. 19 Dec 2009. <http://communication.howstuffworks.com/how-social-networks-work.htm>. | ||
“Tom Anderson Bio, Founder of MySpace.” Web. 19 Dec 2009. <http://founderbios.com/tom-anderson.php>.
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Without social networking in the twenty-first century, things would be very different. Communication is everything, connections are what make and break people. The more people you know, the better off you are especially in the business world. With the rise of social networking sites, it has given us the opportunity to get out in the world and connect. With the click of a button, communication is possible throughout the world. Social networking has a lot to offer, good and bad. People become famous through these sites but then again people can also go to jail.
Networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are visited daily by millions of people. About half of social networker visit social-networks sites on a daily basis and half of them say they log on several times a day. “Among household members, those age 12-17 are more likely than their siblings to be daily users, with 57% saying they frequently visit social networking sites at least once a day. Most users more than three-quarters log onto social networking sites from home, but users also log on at work, school, and public places throughout the day. Women are more likely to visit social networking sites than men; in general, women use the internet more than men for personal communication.” (One 1) Youth today are spending an ideal amount of time on these sites, it has become part of their daily route. One wakes up, brushes their teeth, checks their Facebook, moves on with their daily activities, come home and check their Facebook again. What is so important about these sites that people are constantly connected. Years ago, before having any technology to interact, communication was physical. One actually had to bring themselves to whom ever they needed to speak to. Today, physical interaction is minimal. Our lives have become virtual.
Virtual social lives are organized onto these social networking sites. The site allows users to add friends and/or drop who ever they want. This “list” of friends that people have are most likely a large majority of their close friends and distant friends. With all the applications on these sites such as updates, posts, adding pictures and so on gives people, whom have permission, to view whatever they want about these users lives. This site is like a soap opera, its addicting. We constantly want to know what everyone is doing at every point in time. With the rise of technology, it is no surprise that our society acts in such a way. We are the age of the internet and technology is part of our daily lives. The fact that we have our own virtual worlds at our fingertips makes it so easy for us to engage in social interactions whenever we please.
The fact the our lives now evolve around the internet makes us less active in the real world. There are less and less children playing ball outside because they are inside playing virtual baseball on the computer. The same thing goes for our social lives, instead of walking down the street to great a neighbor, we sing onto Facebook and buddy chat them. We have become lazy! I can’t imagine how our social skills are going to be in 10 years. Hours a day are spent online communicating online, soon that is going to be the base of communication. Communicating online, especially though the internet creates an”invisible audience”. No matter what one does on the internet whether they are communicating or playing a game, there is always an audience.
“I’m in the 7th grade. I’m 13. I’m not a cheerleader. I’m not the president of the student body. Or captain of the debate team. I’m not the prettiest girl in my class. I’m not the most popular girl in my class. I’m just a kid. I’m a little shy. And it’s really hard in this school to impress people enough to be your friend if you’re not any of those things. But I go on these really great vacations with my parents between Christmas and New Year’s every year. And I take pictures of places we go. And I write about those places. And I post this on my Xanga. Because I think if kids in school read what I have to say and how I say it, they’ll want to be my friend.” (Boyd 1)- Social networking sites are a good and bad outlet for people who have trouble expressing themselves physically. Many people are intimidated by others in the real word and inside they feel as if they are a “smaller” person. Feeling so small inside creates an anxiety for some and socially they can not communicate. With a world based on communication, people who fear communicating physically rely on the virtual world. Social networking becomes their main tool to communicate. Registering for a site such as Facebook allows people to show off who they really are, they are not holding anything back. Social networking sites allows one to control what is going on on their page. It is comforting for one to be able to “delete” something. If some one says something offensive they have the option to delete it. With a variety of applications and options it creates a comfort zone. As these sites make people feel more open and comfortable, some people get out of hand.
Cyber stalking is something very common in the virtual world. The scary thing about cyber stalking is that it is hard to detect. Because people like to have the “popular” status on these sites they ass who ever they want, they do not care who they are they just want their social capital to increase. Quite clearly this can be a problem. Parents always teach their children to never under any circumstance talk to stranger. While maybe they have done a good job of that out in the real world, they never thought it would apply through the internet. Adding or accepting a “stranger” on a social networking site is pretty close to inviting a stranger into your house. No one in their right mind would accept a stranger in their home so why is it ok to do online? Since these sites are so new, many lines have yet too been crossed. People do not know better than adding whoever they want, it seems harmless. Little do they know that predators such as sexual molesters are creating accounts trying to lure in their prey. The fact that people are posting information such as their home towns and phone numbers online makes it really easy for such people to attack. As scary as it sounds, people do get attacked through this site, not virtually but physically. People need to become more aware of what they are posting. Even if it is a harmless picture, there can be information in the picture that my help connect a predator to one.
What one posts on the internet sticks around. Recently social networking sites have become the most valuable use of information for lawyers. It is making cases so much easier to trace people to a certain event. “Duane Brady lost his job and faces criminal charges after posting allegedly defamatory messages on Facebook. In Canada, a woman off work for depression had her sick benefits suspended after she posted pictures showing her out, about and happy.”(Legal 1) Lawyers are digging through these site to find valuable information. From the time one registers a site all the way to the present-day, one can find any form of information that was ever posted even if the user deleted it. Now with businesses, companies are browsing through employees sites and future perspectives to see what is going on in their social lives. If they find any information on their site that they feel is unethical they will fire one or not hire someone, it’s as simple as that. “One should really review the Regulation of Communications Act: he say, which allows employers to intercept and monitor communications, this includes what you post on your blog, emails, telephone calls, internet activity and faxes.” (Legal 1) “Copyright laws also apply. Employees should not disclose company information it can be subject to the Copyright Act. And disclosing other company information could be a breach of an employee’s fiduciary duties.“ (Legal 1)If you post: ‘my boss is an idiot’ or write something criticising the policies of the company you work for, you are bringing them into disrepute and that is unlawful.” The fact that some one is talking about a business in an unethical manner is considered slander. One who commits slander may en up facing jail time.( Legal 1)
The internet is a scary world. We do not exactly know how to act on it yet since there are not as many rules. More and more laws are starting to rise from the internet. Slowly taking it step by step we are realising how the internet is a good opportunity but can end up with bad results. Social Networking sites are a great new invention with boundaries. As we progress in the internet age we will eventually find our medium to socially communicate, but until then users need to walk on eggshells. It is a dangerous virtual world, but with time we can change that.
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In cyberspace, possibilities are endless, anything goes. I mean people can get away with a lot of things in the virtual world, music is downloaded every second of the day. Imagine going into a CD store and grabbing whatever album you liked and just walked out of the store. There would be some serious consequences, probably jail time. Now why is that okay in cyberspace? Being on the internet is a safe zone for some people. They feel as if they are invisible in a world with millions of people, people doing the same thing they are. So much goes on in cyberspace its hard to keep track of, which is why it is hard to set laws and regulations on it. People always find a way to beat the system. The world we live in today is filled with many different characters; good, bad, pretty, ugly, smart, stupid, harmless, dangerous, you name it. The internet is like a candy story for a kid, it has everything! When you add social networking sites to the internet, now thats the icing on the cake. Come on now, people can interact with anyone they want in real-time, meaning at the click of a button you are communicating with some one possibly from a different country at that exact same moment! This all just seems to good too be true. Most of the time when its to good to be true probably means that it is too good to be true. Social Networking sites have crashed into our lives like a tidal wave and many people do not know how to handle it. Creating these accounts have dug people into holes that they never imagined they would be in.
Information posted on a social networking site does not go unseen. People can view information one has posted such as the user, the users “friends”, the website, the world. For the people who believe they can be invisible on the internet, must truly believe in the supernatural. Information posted on the internet lives forever and anyone can see it. Shady things do go on in the cyber world so regulations such as saving information is a must. There are privacy settings on these sites saying that users can not get a hold of your information which is a great setting to have but people do not realize that the owners of the site have access to your every move. Account holders use these sites to interact whether the interactions are good or bad. Not knowing all the rules, people feel as if they can say whatever they want in cyber space, its freedom of speech. Users engaging in casual conversations most likely will go unnoticed. The users who think they are invisible and feel that their racial slurs will go unnoticed are wrong. If one person is offended by any comment on any site, they have the freedom to complain. This is where the law is enforced. If one were to take some one to court for a racial slur that was posted on a site, they need to remember that whatever was said is saved to the website. In a nutshell if what was said is true, they will be called out on it. There is no hiding.
“Strawberry fields forever” is just a random saying one wrote on another’s wall. Others know that line from a famous band called The Beatles. Is it okay to post that information on some ones wall not giving credit to The Beatles? In other words, would a student take another students paper and hand it in as their own? Even though its just three simple words, it can cause controversy if the owner of the material feels their using there lyrics in a wrong manor. It can very well be considered copyrighting. Now, while that quote posted on ones wall is in fact from The Beatles, they are using it in as “Fair Use”. “Fair use” was created to allow the use of copyrighted works for criticism, news reporting, research and scholorship, and classroom instruction. The nature of the quote being used in ones status was not intended in a bad way. They were expressing themselves through lyrics. If the person had taken lyrics from the entire song and posted it up on their wall without recognition to The Beatles, that would be copyright. People need to be careful of what they are copying and pasting on their walls. If the information one is taking from some one else is not cited, they can be sued for copyrighting.
Many of these social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have tools that allow users to post pictures to their page. Uploading pictures to ones computer is very simple. You plug your camera wire into your computer and press upload. After one has successfully done that, they have the option on their site to post all of these photos and make it into an album. After an album is made, the user has the option to tag all of their friends in these pictures. To “tag” someone in a picture means that you are posting a picture on some one elses site. Normally you tag some one in a picture because they are in it. Like most settings users can limit who can see these pictures. Once again the privacy setting is great but the same rules apply and these photo’s stick around. Posting picture’s believe it or not can really cause some serious damage. In many situations these photos are solid evidence. In some cases, these photo’s can be used in child custody cases. “Pictures of a parent in various compromising situations while a child or children are in the parent’s custody can present a major problem in a custody lawsuit. Partying, drinking, and negative statements about children used on social networking sites can be offered as evidence in Court. Parents should use caution when placing pictures and other information on their social networking site.”(Beware 1) Social networking has also been used in sexual harassment cases. ”In Houston, Texas, a plaintiff was portrayed as a modest, innocent “wannabe nun.” (Beware 1) The opposing counsel found a MySpace page that painted a very different picture of a plaintiff, with numerous photos of her in scanty or provocative attire and engaged in suggestive horseplay at bars and with friends.” Social networking has also been used in sexual harassment cases. “In Houston, Texas, a plaintiff was portrayed as a modest, innocent “wannabe nun.” The opposing counsel found a MySpace page that painted a very different picture of a plaintiff, with numerous photos of her in scanty or provocative attire and engaged in suggestive horseplay at bars and with friends.”
Social Networking sites have become rapidly become popular. Changes are being made to these sites everyday. The fact that it has become such a phenomenon so fast, people dont know how to react. Not everybody knows all the rules, which is why people are getting in trouble for it. The rise of social networking sites has its ups and downs. Including the government, we do not know how to properly handle it. The more we live in the age of the internet the more we are becoming aware of the pro’s and con’s of these virtual worlds. Social networking is a great tool to use to contact people throughout the world but no matter how convenient it may be people always need to be cautious in a virtual world.
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The Industrial Revolution has made a large impact on our society today. With the creation of the computer our world has completely morphed. We have gone from working with our bare hands to working with robots. Today, our world has become so advanced in technology that we have a tendency to want everything in a fast pace. We don’t like to wait for things. As technology advances, so does society. We have a constant need for newer technologies and advances in programs. People today can not even fathom the idea of not having a computer. If you do not own one, you will struggle in life, everything is done on the computer.
Computers have provided us with many advancements in society, especially socially. Communication is key to our world and technology provides us with useful tools to do so. Walking down the city streets today, 9 out of 10 people will have some form of media technology whether it be a cell phone or a computer of some sort. Theres a good chance that a majority of those people are engaging in social networking sites or thinking about it. “A social network is a social structure that maps out the relationships between individuals.”(Roos 1) Basically everyone who makes a social networking site has a possible tie to any single person who also has a site. Its one giant web broken into layers connected by ties to other layers. Those so called layers would be considered social “groups”, and the ties would be the connection to the social group. The ties to groups are endless, it really is a small world. Some smaller networks might be defined by families, friends, where one lives, where one works, where one went to school, hobbies and interests and much more.
Believe it or not, social networking is the base of many persons social interactions. It helps individuals create a space where they can organize their social capital. They can have as many relationships as possible, whether they are close or distant. To physically have one thousand friends and be able to interact with them daily is nearly impossible. In a virtual world it is common to have over a thousand friends and be able to interact with them everyday. Interacting with one thousand people daily seems boarder line insane, but its possible. The simplicity of being able to reach people at real-time is utterly amazing. People are drawn to this convenience and create accounts instantly. Many people are not aware of the rules and regulations of social networking, but they don’t care if its easier it is simply for them.
Convenience is key in our world, which is what social networking sites are providing us. Social interactions are at our fingertips. Today the most common way for a college student to keep in touch with their friends is Facebook, a social networking site. The reasons are obvious as to why these sites have become so popular, they are simple. All one has to do is create an account to the social network they prefer and they have entered a world of endless interactions. In the past,when physically engaging in conversation, the standard questions to approach a stranger are as follows: whats your name, where do you live, where do you work, where did you grow up, what school did you go to? Today all one needs to know is your name. After that information is revealed one most likely will type that into one of their networking sites and see if that person has a page. Chances are they do, so if one is willing to accept that person as a friend much information is revealed. It is up to each person to reveal as much or as little information as they prefer.
When one creates a site for a social network, they are putting themselves into a world where they can not hide. Many think other wise but by law anything posted on the internet may be revealed at any point in time. Applications, friends, posts, adding/ deleting friends, surfing friends posted sites, relationships, and browsing are just a few options one can do on these sites. One of the more popular sites was MySpace in the year of 2004. A majority of MySpace users were young adults. MySpace was the big thing in highschool, if you didnt have a page you didnt exist. This site was a way for these teenagers to express themselves in a way that they never have before. Aim and AOL had nothing on MySpace. The layout of this site aloud users to set a default picture, which represented themselves. The fact that they were able to choose what ever picture they wanted to express themselves as was exciting. Finally, people were able to show their true colors being able to post pictures of their favorite actors, musicians, and upload songs. This world of MySpace really revolutionized expression. It also really brought out the designer in everyone being able to create your own layouts.
As social-networking sites go mainstream, the demographics are shifting. “By August 2006, more than two-thirds of MySpace visitors were over 25 years old, with more than 40 percent between the ages of 35 and 54.” (Roos 1)By the blink of an eye, users jumped from MySpace to Facebook. The reasons were clear, Facebook finally allowed users outside of the college network to join. People were curious and wanted to see what it was about. As MySpace was more about expressions of the individual user, Facebook focused more on the networking aspect. College students used the site to keep in touch with their colleges. Now, Facebook has evolved and people use it to stay connected to people all over the world. The times are changing.
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Dana Boyd is an academic, researcher, and blogger. She is well-known for her research and surveys involving the interactions and use of social networking sites. She digs deep into the virtual world today and provides our world with accurate information on what is going on. Many of us do not know what goes on in a virtual world which is why she has studied different aspects of social networking.
Boyd started out studied computer science at Brown University when she wrote a thesis paper on how “3-D computer systems used cues that were inherently sexist.” After being intrigued by the information she unfolded she pursued her Masters Degree in Sociable Media at MIT Media Lab. In 1999, she worked the New York Based V-Day, first as a volunteer and then as paid staff. She eventually moved to San Francisco, California, where she became associated with individuals involved in creating the new Friendster service. She documented what she was observing via her blog, and this grew into a career.
She advanced to a Ph.D with a background in new media, graduating from UC Berkley Information, in 2006. Her thesis was titled “Taken Out Of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics”, and focused on the use of sites such as Facebook and MySpace by U.S. teenagers. Boyd is also co-director of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group of Internet businesses companies organized at Harvard University as a non-profit group. She is also involved in a collaborative project examining youths’ use of technologies through interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis. Her research in an article “MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning, Identity Volume” called Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites:The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. This article analyzes and discusses many of the issues that youth are facing today in the online networked publics that have become a major part of their social lives. The article focuses on social networks as an outlet for youth identity. Her research on this article was roughly two years. In addition to blogging on her own site, she addresses issues of youth and technology use on the DMLcentral blog. Dana Boyd has had a large impact acknowledging youth on the pro’s and con’s of virtual worlds.
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Mark Zuckerber is one of the co-founders of Facebook. He launched Facebook from his college dorm in Harvard. The name “Facebook” was the idea of the traditional yearbook where students pictures are all printed out on several pages with their names printed on the top. As a whole a yearbook is filled with head shots of the entire school such as students, faculty, and staff. Mark Zuckerber went to a prep school where they called their yearbook a “Facebook” which is where the name of the site “Facebook” orriginated. Once at college, Zuckerberg’s Facebook started off as just a “Harvard-thing”, until Zuckerberg then decided to spread Facebook to other schools. Without the help of Zuckerburgs roommate Dustin Moskovitz, this larger connection would not have been possible. They first spread it to most admirable schools such as Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, and Cornell, and other schools with social contact to Harvard.
Zuckerburg eventually moved out to California where he held his data base for “Facebook” along with his roommates. On Sept. 5 2005 Facebook launched News Feed, a product to show what your friends were doing on the site. Zuckerberg was criticized as some saw News Feed as unnecessary and a tool for cyberstalking. “On May 24, 2007, Zuckerberg announced a Facebook Platform, a development platform for programmers to create social applications within Facebook. This announcement sparked a great deal of interest in the developer community. Within weeks, many applications had been built and some already had millions of users. Today, there are more than 800,000 developers around the world building applications for Facebook Platform.”(Mark 1)
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Tom Anderson- Founder of Myspace
Born November 8, 1970, Tom Anderson is the President, co-founder, and “first friend” of MySpace. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, he earned a Master’s degree in film at UCLA. Tom had a job offer as a copywriter with Xdrive Technologies, an email marketing company that was then purchased by eUniverse.(Tom 1)
While employed as Xdrive Technologies, Tom works with DeWolfe and Anderson. Together they began talking about creating an ad-supported social networking site similar to the design of Friendster. Resources at eUniverse really helped the rise of Myspace. The helped set up a lists of email addresses and used them to directly market to them the idea of MySpace and encouraged them to create an account. Also, members of eUniverse’s paid sites such as dating network CupidJunction were encouraged to open free accounts with MySpace.
Still employed as a copywriter for eUniverse, Anderson made the first official MySpace account. Every new account automatically begins with him added as a “friend” . The reason Tom was everybody’s first friend was so that he was networked to every single person who singed up for an account and so that users could contact Tom as a “friend”. He was the base of all friends on MySpace.
MySpace grew at a tremendous rate, knocking Friendster of the social networking latter. Aggressive marketing started developing through promoters and their bands. The bands gave users access to download music on the site, which has become an easy way for lesser-known or undiscovered bands to promote themselves. “eUniverse, which is now known as Intermix Media, was bought out by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and the non-MySpace holdings thereof were then sold again to Demand Media, a former MySpace executive. Anderson remains as President of the company.” (Tom 1)
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History of Social Networking
The first social networking site was made in 1997, sixdegrees.com. It allowed users to create profiles, list their friends, and surf friend lists. Profiles were made mostly for dating sites and community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists gave the opportunity to provide lists of friends, which were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed users to associate with their high school and college friends, and also allowed them to surf the network of others who were associated. Lists and profiles had not developed until a few years later. SixDegrees was the first site to combine all of these features. (Boyd 1)
SixDegrees was promoted by itself to help people come in contact and send messages to various people. This website attracted millions of users but failed to become as a business. This website was to complicated and people believed this site was ahead of its time. After accepting friends on their page there was little to do after that. Whats the fun in that? Shortly after realizing there was not much to the site, people ditched it. When SisDegrees was designed, many people did not have access to the internet, which made it hard for the registered users to build a friend network since not many other people were registered.
“In the years of 1997 through 2001, a number of community tools began to support combinations of profiles and public friends.” (Boyd 1) “AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating sites. These sites allowed users to connect to other friends profiles without their permission.” LiveJournal’s creator suspects that he fashioned these Friends after instant messaging buddy lists (Boyd 2) LiveJournal aloud users to keep a diary of their lives, or whatever they felt they needed to express. The cool thing about this site was that other people could view ones pesonal page if they granted them permission. Again a friend network is being built. The reason why LiveJournal had more of a success than SixDegrees was because more and more people were using the internet. After the success of Instant Messaging, Livejournal could not go wrong.
The next tidal wave of social networking sites began when Ryze.com was designed in 2001. The design of this site was to create connections throughout the business world, to help make the “its all about who you know connections” easier to create. The intentions of users registering in sites such as Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, and Friendster sign up with the intentions to connect with people personally and professionally. These similar sites all worked together to form the base of these networking sites, they were all experimenting in a professional fasion, it was not a competition. “In the end, Ryze never acquired mass popularity, Tribe.net grew to attract a passionate niche user base, LinkedIn became a powerful business service, and Friendster became the most significant, if only as “one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history.” (Boyd 2)
Friendster was launched with the same intentions as Ryze. The design was made as a function for people to connect and interact. As Friendster was working with Ryze, it was competing with Match.com. Match.com was another networking site organized to bring “strangers” with similar qualities together hoping that they will find true love. The one catch to this website was that it had a price. Users had to pay a fee in order to sign up. Apparently, you have to work for true love. “While most dating sites focused on introducing people to strangers with similar interests, Friendster was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that friends-of-friends would make better romantic partners than would strangers.” ( Boyd 2)These traits of Friendster were more appealing than Match.com, which is why it had a larger fan base.
The design of Friendster had a restritction from users to view any profile of people who were more than four degrees away. In order for users to browse more profiles, they had to make their social capital larger. People started adding interesting looking people, attractive people, even strangers just for the variety of searchability. For the people who went on an “adding” binge, might be the users people know as the “popular” one. People tried to add as many people as posible because it gave off this vibe to people that they were well liked. Another fad was to create a “fake” profile, representing iconic fictional characters: celebrities, concepts, and other such entities. “These “Fakesters” outraged the company, who banished fake profiles and eliminated the “most popular” feature (boyd, in press-b).” “While few people actually created Fakesters, many more enjoyed surfing Fakesters for entertainment or using functional Fakesters (Boyd 2″) to find people they knew.” Although people found entertainment in these “faksters” other users felt betrayed. They did not know who to trust, for all they know half the network was filled with fakers. Because of the invasion of the fakers, more and more dropped this site. (Boyd 2)
Moving foward to the year of 2003, many new social networking sites were launched. Social networking has now become a big deal in people’s social lives. They were everywhere. Most sites resembled all the other sites out their with maybe a different title or some different applications on it. As the social media as a whole grew, websites that focused on media sharing began implementing social networking features and started becoming social networks themselves. Examples include Flickr (which allows users to upload pictures and share their photos), Last.FM (music listening habits), and YouTube (allows users to upload videos and share with other users).
MySpace was begun in 2003 to compete with sites like Friendster, Xanga, and AsianAvenue, according to co-founder Tom Anderson, the founders wanted to attract estranged Friendster users. Rumers flew all over that friendster was going to be come a fee-based website. No body wanted to pay fees for the site so they all bailed. A new site that caught the typical users eye was MySpace. It was similar to friendster, it was somthing new, there was no fee, it was perfect. Users posted Friendster messages encouraging people to join alternate social networking sites, including Tribe.net and MySpace. One particularly group that strongly encouraged others to make the switch were indie-rock band. Rock bands were expelled from Friendster for failing to comply with profile regulations so MySpace was the hot new outlet.
While MySpace was not launched with bands in mind, they were indeed welcomed. Indie-rock bands from the Los Angeles region began creating profiles promoting their bands. Local promoters began using Myspace as a way to help promote these bands and attract other MySpace users to follow these bands. The way these promotors and bands were utilizing MySpace, really intrigued the owner of the site. MySpace wanted to help out these bands and they contacted local musicians to see how they could support them. Bands were not the blue print of MySpace growth, but the real relationship between bands and fans helped MySpace expand beyond Friendster users. The bands-and-fans dynamic was mutually beneficial: Bands wanted to be able to contact fans, while fans wanted attention from their favorite bands and used Friend connections to signal identity and affiliation.
MySpace differentiated itself by adding features based on user demand, if enough people requested something it was created. This allowed users to personalize their pages. Many features on this site allowed users to design it in their own fashion. The idea of MySpace allowed users to express themselves however they pleased. The set up of Myspace had the same ideas of other site but advanced in a way that appealed more to users. Users felt that they could really personalize their sites. By expressing one self it made it easier to find other friends with the same interest based on the set ups of each persons page. Pages led users eyes.
Teenagers began joining MySpace roughly around the year of 2004. Unlike older users, most teens were never on Friendster, some joined because they wanted to connect with their favorite bands others just wanted to connect with family. As teens began signing up, they encouraged their friends to join.
July 2005, News Corporation purchased MySpace for 580 million dollars, drawing tuns of media attention. When your in the eye of the public people can pull out pro’s and con’s of every situation. People started to notice that MySpace, could actually be dangerous. Sexual predictors could contact users with out users knowing. It is so easy to hide an identity when it’s so easy to create some one you are really not. Although research was exaggerated people now took precautions not only using MySpace, but with all social networking sites.
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