Social Networking: A Connected Planet
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 22 seconds. Contains 676 words.
Prompt:
- What are some ways (corporate and otherwise) that these technologies can be used?
- What are the benefits of these technologies to society? Be specific. Is there a “dark side?”
- Make sure to include your opinion of the way these technologies might evolve in the future.
I was a freshman in high school when I first heard of Facebook. We were in the basement-level computer lab, supposedly working on developing our database management skills when one of the popular kids, Daniel, grinned as he opened a new tab in Mozilla Firefox and loaded a blue homepage with the word “Facebook” emblazoned on the upper-left corner. As with most trends, if the college kids were doing it, it was cool – and it seemed like anyone who was anybody our age was on there. This was 2008, the beginning of the exponential explosion of users flocking to the site. Although Facebook is currently one of my most frequently visited sites, at the time my catalyst for joining the site was purely my aim of fitting in. Little did I know that my adoption of the site would – in a small way – propel it tenfold to become a service used by nearly a third of all internet users.
The emergence of social networks has undoubtedly changed how we interact. According to one analysis, people on Facebook are, on average, three degrees away from any other given person. The online web has meshed with the social web. A prominent example of how social networks influence our lives was the impact of digital participation in the initial election of Barack Obama. An article in the New York Times profiled how internet titan Marc Andreessen leverage online community building to build a brand and a connected base:
All of the Obama supporters who traded their personal information for a ticket to a rally or an e-mail alert about the vice presidential choice, or opted in on Facebook or MyBarackObama can now be mass e-mailed at a cost of close to zero. And instead of the constant polling that has been a motor of presidential governance, an Obama White House can use the Web to measure voter attitudes. (Carr)
With all the traffic and interactions occurring online, sifting through the data to help tailor user experience is a colossal challenge. One European study aimed to place users in groups congruent to their behavior, which would make the task of personalizing experiences more efficient. It stated that the ideal way to evaluate is to link seemingly insignificant actions:
through a series of multiple interfaces that let them to upload and view content, choose friends, rank favorite content, subscribe to users and do many other interactions
A major drawback, however, is the fact that with more and more information being willfully shared, corporations may choose to share personal profiles and behavior with third-party companies, or to profit off the users directly. Social media allows participation across the globe without a fee for the product, suggesting that we ourselves are the product, offering private information which possess monetary value.
It’s worth noting that our high school presence on Facebook did not change our social status or who we were truly friends with in reality. Moreover, being connected to everyone made us feel disconnected – always socially inadequate. Studies have demonstrated strong correlations between social media usage and feelings of loneliness, suggesting that social media isn’t necessarily the answer to the social needs people yearn for. Although we must adapt to the virtual social world we live in, it is important to be cautious of the fact that social media can dilute the real relationships and experiences we have. Participating in the digital age is an unprecedented opportunity to form networks, but it can come at the cost of our overall privacy and joy.
Works Cited
- “How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power,” by David Carr, The New York Times. November 10, 2008; at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html
- Identifying user behavior in online social networks by Marcelo Maia, Jussara Almeida, and Virgílio Almeida, European Conference on Computer Systems, Proceedings of the 1st workshop on Social Network Systems, April, 2008. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1435498
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