Social

Networking

Michelle Breen
For LNSS Project
May 6th 2009
Week 9 of 23 Things
Social Networking

Thing 18

Take a look at some

Social Networking sites
First, a definition . . .
A social networking site is a web-based services
that allows individuals to construct a public or
semi-public profile within a bounded system,
articulate a list of other users with whom they
share a connection, and view and traverse their
list of connections and those made by others
within the system.

Boyd, D.M., Ellison, N. B. (2007) Social network sites: Definition, history, and
scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
For today’s talk
What are social networking
sites useful for?

• Communicating?

• Collaborating?

• Nothing at all?
Mission: to connect the world’s professionals
to accelerate their success

• Started 2002, 4,500 members first official month

• Today, over 39m members
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second
• About half the members are outside the U.S.
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are members
Why I got started on social networking
Challenge # 1: Challenge # 2:

Finding anything interesting •Wot u up 2 l8r

to write on my BEBO, when
really I was just there
observing •Wl bdr b4 dinr 2nite,
BFN
Problem: my peers weren’t
there
•C U @ pub l8r LOL
 has many features
(I don’t like them all)
• The Wall
• Messages INBOX (and threads) & Chat
• Friends
• Pokes
• Groups
• Fan Pages & Adverts
• Events
• Photos & Videos
• Posted items & notes
• Shared items
• Applications (games)
 Teaching using
• Have your students in groups
• Have them as Facebook “friends” perhaps in a friend group
that you can restrict
– Some students may be outraged that their lecturer ‘be-friended’ them but others may
think it’s good to be able to see a ‘real life’ side of the person who’s teaching them
• Post and share URLs
– Reading lists
– Other online material
• Don’t put your own material on facebook
– just link to it
• Photos & Videos (but watch copyright!)
• Organise group work with facebook events.
Example, teaching using a social
networking tool

David Hamill, TCD

TCD TAP (Trinity Access Programme).

Because the VLEs are not v. appealing to students,

David used the commercial version of NING to deliver
learning material to students. The students really
engaged with this and referred to it as ‘our own Bebo’.

The website he used is http://tap2008.ning.com

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10141752-36.html
 Usage in Ireland
• 200m people worldwide use
• 610k in Ireland
• 1.5m Irish people on

• Irish Times has 319k daily readers

• UL Library averages ~4k visitors a day
 Usage on the web?
• & are in the top 10 MOST visited sites

• In Ireland, is in the top 10.

• 17% of people worldwide that go on the internet visit

• The average amount of time someone spends on a Facebook visit is 25

minutes – hardly fits in with the skimming users profile that we thought we
were dealing with

Source: http://www.alexa.com/topsites
 Why so popular?
• It’s free, games, videos, links, news, gossip, pics
• Old friends, new friends – poking
• Contains more info about your contacts than just email address
• No instant chat required, post and leave
• Read an update about someone without having to call or email
• Easier than face-to-face
• If your friends are on Bebo or Facebook chances are you will be too
 Why so popular?

• RECRUITMENT

Right now, if you sent me a resume in a envelope, there's

little chance that I'll even open it and the first thing I'm
going to do when I get it is I'm gonna look online to see
where you are. And if you're not online, then I'm going to
think, well, why aren't you online? Are you even current
to the market? Do you even understand what's going on
in the world?

Marketplace Money, Friday October 19th 2007

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/10/19/online_job_networking/
Life beyond BEBO & Facebook
Young children and teenagers social network
in different places:

– Club Penguin
– Webkinz
– Hi5
Social networking sites, not for kids
 Social networking sites for
specific age groups or interests
• Age:
– Multiply (seniors and settled); Boomj (baby boomers); Rezoom
• Country of origin:
– Silicon India
• Gender:
– CaféMom; MothersClick; Sister Woman (female friends)
• Occupation:
– ModelsHotel; FanLib (fiction writers); AdGabber; TheFeng.org
(financial services executives); MilitarySpot (military families); Sermo
(doctors and physicians),
• Business and careers:
– ConnectBuzz; Doostang; Execunet; Netshare; Ryze; Viadeo; Xing
• Interests:
– TradeKing (investors); Ravelry (knitting); StreetCred (hip hop);
IndiePublic (art and design); PeerTrainer (health and wellbeing)
 Library related SNS
(SNS = social networking sites)
 Will SNS be around in 5
years?
Yes, the next generation of it will – with all
services in a central service – will learning
happen in the same place as socialising?

The graduates of the MA IN Social Media from

City University in Birmingham certainly hope
that these internet collaboration tools go on
for a long time.
 That was . . . . .
Thing 18: Social Networking

Thank you for your time

Any questions?