SOCIAL NETWORKING
WEBSITE ANALYSIS
Matt Bush
CS73N Project
Spring 2007
Why social networking?
• Specialized in social networking at Internet
research job
• social networking issues:
– public profiles & employment
– online predators and child safety
– social activism & communities for minorities
• public reactions to these issues
– new laws being created
– do concerned parents and schools have the
full story?
My research goals
• analyze effectiveness of social networks
• present links to websites with content
related to all these issues
• give a balanced perspective of issues like
child safety
• generalize components of a social network
– united social network
How I’m doing it
• research methods
– Google news and blog search
– knowledge of site history
– site ratings
• website plan
– a typical user of Aaron’s website
– non-interactive HTML with professional look
– on Stanford webspace, no costs
Websites I examine
• most successful and unique websites
• site models shaping audience and content
– Facebook: privacy, network-oriented model
– MySpace: started with music sharing,
entertainment-oriented
• learning from their successes
• other kinds of related sites
– blog sites
– photo/multimedia
Example pages
• photo sharing
– how well do social networking sites compara-
tively integrate photo sharing features?
– how do other image-oriented sites compare?
– hosting vs. artist communities
– varying viewpoints of posting photos of others
• privacy/safety issues
– balanced perspectives, from concerned users
and sites
– laws, educational and parental perspectives
– site policies that have evolved out of it
Questions?
• Social Networking Website Analysis
• http://www.stanford.edu/~mattbush/cs73n/