Social Networks - Session 2: Inside Social Networking

Inside Social Networking

Part I
Inside Facebook and MySpace


Justin Smith, InsideFacebook.com
Nationally recognized expert on FaceBook and MySpace and their expansion into the workplace and publisher of the blog InsideFacebook.

What is Facebook?
Facebook started in February 2004, today 10 million registered users

Facebook has resulted in a culture shift.
- 85% of US college students have accounts
- 60% log in at least 1 times per day
- You can only see people in your networks

Profile Page includes:
School affiliations
Profile picture
Contact information
Relationship status
Interests
Work History
Wall
Live status

What else does Facebook provide?
Facebook allows you to establish a friend list to create your social network.

Facebook allows you to upload your photos to share with your friends
- You can post shared experiences
- You can also tag your friends who are in your photos

Facebook allows you to join and create groups
- Provides identity for user
- People, companies, politicians utilize groups for grass-roots campaigns

Facebook provides a news feed that is a stream of updates detailing the things that people in your social network are doing in real-time
- Resulted in protests (900,000 members protested in 24 hours) due to privacy issues
being displayed in real-time

What is MySpace?
MySpace started in July 2003, and today has 106 million registerd users
- MySpace started in LA Indie Music community
- Edgy, showy culture
- More personalizable

Profile Page:
Less privacy
Less formal

Friends' Comments:
Visible to public
Used to gain attention

Band pages:
Free music
Promotion and distribution
Fans interact with the band or musician

Videos:
Combination of user-generated, promotional and Fox content
Competing with YouTube

What needs are being met?
1. Hanging out
- Kids are bored, curfews keep them home
2. Image management
- The worst part about high school.. continued
- Online identity trends
3. Dating research (stalking)
- More socially acceptable way to take the next step
- Powerful way to gather information
4. Sharing media
- Picture uploading and distribution made easy


Part II
New Professional Services

What are social services?
- Professional
- Passion-centric
- Demographic-centric
- New possibilities...

Professional
What is Linkedin?
-Profile
-Connections
-Introductions (for job seekers)
-Recommendations (for headhunters) from people you have worked with to help in job-seeking.
-7 to 8M users

What is Jobster?
-A recruiting tool to upload and search resumes

What is Spoke
-It allows people to buy software to find a link between you and the person you what to be introduced to for job search.

Passion-centric
Gaming- What is Xfire?
- An instant-message client that builds a profile page of what you do in games.
- You can talk to your friends while playing games and monitor their gaming activities
- Average users spend 60 hours/month on Xfire.

Pets- What is Dogster?
- Make friends with other dogs
- Blog about your dog (written in voice of dog)
- Post photos of your dog

Travel-What is RealTravel?
- Meet people who have gone where you are going

Photography-What is Flickr?
-Track and talk about your friends photos

Music-What is Last.fm?
-Meet people who share your taste and find new music

Video-YouTube?
-Biggest sites where you can upload videos.
-100M videos watched each day

Demographic-centric
Children-What is Stardoll?
-Meet other girls who enjoy dolls

Teens-What is Tagged?
-MySpace for 13 - 18 years old

Families-What is Amiglia?
-Build relationships with extended family by building archives

Europe-What is FaceParty?
-Many huge services outside US
-Risque/sexual content and culture
-Some are country specific

Asia-What is CyWorld?
-Sells icons and buttons to put on personal pages

New kinds of services
Lending-What is Prosper?
-Hopeful borrowers tell personal stories
-Lenders extend loans that banks won't extend

Shoppping-What is Kaboodle?
-Shoppers create wish lists

Dating-What is Engage?
-Matchmakers write up their friends and set up matches

Self Improvement-What is 43Things?
-State a list of goals and friends cheer you on
-500,000 users

Summary
Several investments taking place for social networking, Web 2.0 is new and untested.
Social services online are very different that traditional means.