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1 EVTEK University of Applied Sciences Institute of Technology Degree Programme in Media Engineering Seongtaek Kwon Social Networking Media Seminar Project 18 November 2006 Instructor: Erkki Rämö, Project Manager 2 EVTEK University of Applied Sciences Institute of Technology ABSTRACT Author Title Number of Pages Date Degree Programme Supervisor Seongtaek Kwon Social Networking 15 18th November 2006 Media Engineering Erkki Rämö, Principal Lecturer Social networking industry is rapidly growing. Not only entrepreneurs, small companies run it but the biggest companies are opening and acquiring it. Social networking can be seen with business, programming, interface, and graphical perspectives. Personal working experience and proper online news articles have been quoted for this report. Social networking industry has several leaders but a number of others are also successful. Social networking sites are being evolved and developed in terms of features and functions. Flash based social networking seems to be next generation of it. For further study it would be useful to research next generation of social networking as well as purposes of it. Keywords social networking, MySpace, online community, personal profile Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 2 SOCIAL NETWORKING FEATURES 2.1 Registration 2.2 Profile Page 3 4 4 5 3 SOCIAL NETWORKING BUSINESS 3.1 Can It Be Business Model? 6 6 3 3.1.1 Profile Featuring Site 3.1.2 Video Hosting Site 3.1.3 Photo Hosting Site 3.1.4 Friend Adder 3.1.5 Social Networking Start-ups 3.2 Social Networking Economy 3.2.1 Acquisition 3.2.2 Social Networking Derivative 3.2.3 Online Traffic 6 7 7 7 8 9 9 9 10 4 SIDE EFFECTS 4.1 Sexual Predator 4.2 Personal Information Exposure 10 10 11 5 CONCLUSION REFERENCES 11 12 1 Introduction Social networking is website that has its principle people have friends and friends of friends in online network environment. People register social networking website to establish their own profiles that contain personal information, photo album as basic functions. Social networking website has a variety of forms of communication and information share. Commonly its user gets own profile with friends list and user can add people on same social networking website as friends. Normal it has blogs, forum, profile, bulletin, and additionally video or music uploads on advanced websites. [1] First social networking websites did not succeed because of technical problems. But recent social networking websites that have been existing for a few years suddenly became big issues now days. Because of tremendous number of users of social networking websites it suddenly became a place for marketer. Also social networking website is opened for everyone on the web and because of that marketer can register and take advantage of its features easily. However social networking website is not only existing positively but negative facts do exist at the same time. For instance scammers and predators are using social networking site for their evil purposes. 4 2 Social Networking Features Social networking website has its usual features that help user to have interactivity with any one including people on the other side of the earth. When one registers social networking website registered one gets personal profile page that contains photo, friends list, blog, comment or testimonial as usual and possibly media section that contains video or music. [1] 2.1 Registration Registration is essential for use of social networking site. Usual social networking sites do not have any fees user to pay for use. Some of dating sites require credit card info as they are meant to be particularly for adult ages as well as there can be some fees to be paid for use. Except for those adult sites mentioned above common social networking sites do no have any system for identifying person when he or she registers. Registration form usually has sections for name, birth day, password, username, email, country, and human verification code called as captha. Common social networking websites use email verification method that sends email with verification code registering user to put to be verified. Some of them even do not have verification system at all. After you are registered you get access to site you sent registration form via internet. Most of websites ask user to upload main photo and let user to invite his friends via its emailing system that extracts email addresses from desired email accounts. In process of logging into social networking site for a first time there is process user to put personal information. One of the representatives of social networking website, Myspace, registration interface is as shown on figure 1. 5 Figure 1. MySpace registration interface. [MySpace, 2006] 2.2 Profile Page Personal profile page is cyber place that contains main photo that is used for avatar on social networking site. And blog, comment, forum, and its functions that enable communication between registered users. Recently video uploads website has become common online destination and some of social networking websites have integrated it as one part of features. Comment or testimonial on each profile page is also prominent way social networking website to become busier. User comments or writes testimonial on profile page of friend for short greeting or talking about general life story if they are well known friends. Recently comment, however, is in a way abused for spamming by amount of marketers registered as user of social networking website. 6 3 Social Networking Business 3.1 Can It Be Business Model? Social networking website has been know as online place for teenager or dating purpose that are all for entertainment. Social networking, however, is not only place for entertainment but it has been grown so that a lot of people use also it became the busiest destination on the web. There are social networking derivatives that are websites for certain purposes targeting social networking users. 3.1.1 Profile Featuring Site Social networking user who wishes to change profile layout searches for ready-made template. Profile featuring site is it that its targeted user is social networking user and which helps people to re-design and decorate profile as seen on figure 2. Usually profile featuring site is made for MySpace profile since it has the more value for the registered users than any of its kind. MySpace profile is HTML and CSS enabled but JAVA blocked environment. Profile featuring site has either ready made template or layout creator which user can upload back ground image and choose colour and size of text or table. Figure 2. Read-made layout [PimpMyspace] 7 3.1.2 Video Hosting Site Video hosting site is where online user uploads video files in any video extensions and share. YouTube is representative of video hosting site that has been sold at 1.6 billion dollars to Google incorporation. It uses web 2.0 features that user can do things on the web without extra devices or programs. Myspace once blocked YouTube because Myspace users used a lot so it became profitable to YouTube. Myspace, however, revoked it after users loudly protested. [3] 3.1.3 Photo Hosting Site Photo hosting site is successfully generating revenue out of advertising banner on the webpage. Social networking website for instance Myspace users upload images and photos to Photobucket and use them by HTML code that appears in code box below photo uploaded. Also Photobucket and such site help social networking thwart pornography by monitoring millions of photos themselves. Because social networking website can block any site without warning and social networking is almost only aimed destination for photo hosting site. [4] 3.1.4 Friend Adder There are a few friend-adder makers targeting MySpace advertisers or musicians to sell. Not only because MySpace has the most registered users but because it has musician profile service MySpace has been a target of start-up in social networking industry. Friend adder is program or bot that adds searched users. Commonly friend adder program has user searching criteria field that you can get list of desired or targeted users on MySpace. By using friend adder you may add, message, or comment people. A number of musicians, advertisers, and marketers are using it for promotion. Despite MySpace says “Do whatever we do not care” it does not let advertisers to use it as marketing platform. Friend adder program used account on MySpace may gets blocked by MySpace. First friend adder maker, however, succeeded having millions of friends as figure 3 shows it. 8 Figure 3. Profile of bot-user that has a lot of friends on Myspace. [Friendbot] 3.1.5 Social Networking Start-ups Past a few years social networking has been rapidly growing which yet does not seem to have reached peak level. Not only the most popular site MySpace but few others are acquired or being wooed to be sold at millions of dollars. The online companies have been launching brand new social networking websites to be successful. Smaller organizations or even some of entrepreneurs have opened or are opening new social networking websites so called “social networking start-up”. They tend to make sites to be targeting niche market. Websites are MySpace-like services which target certain group such as Muslim, fishing, adult, children, and whichever it is feasible. The start-ups have two choices to commence social networking website running. First one is to build up social networking script from the scratch. Another one is to buy ready-made script available and found on the web. Most popular and advanced script makers are PhpFox and Dzoic. The ready-scripts prices vary 300 to 500 euros 9 depending on what kinds of option is included. One of the options is branding-free which removes copyright text of script maker. Without option removing text is illegal activity. [5] 3.2 Social Networking Economy 3.2.1 Acquisition Social networking has not only been online destination for teens, twenties, marketers, or scammers. The successful services have been acquired or in talks to be sold. MySpace has been sold at 580 million dollars by News Corporation of Rupert Murdoch in July 2005. Rupert Murdoch is, however, making waves after announcing that MySpace could be sold for 6 billion dollars which is more than 10 times bigger value than News Corp. originally paid for. Rupert Murdoch also predicted that MySpace will be worth 10 to 20 billion dollars in 3 years. [6] The most popular social networking website, Bebo, in United Kingdom has rejected 552 million dollars acquisition offering from British Telecom. Bebo thought that it deserves more than asked price and demanded 1 billion for the company. Bebo is quickly growing site and has been evaluated that it has not peaked yet. [7] 22 years old, previously Harvard student, Mr. Zuckerberg has recently reject offers from 2 well-known companies Yahoo and Viacom to sell his social networking site Facebook. Despite offers would make him several hundreds million dollars he said that “We‟re focused on building the company for the long term,” [8] 3.2.2 Social Networking Derivative Social networking representative, MySpace, is the most desired destination on the web today. Social networking is creating its own economic ecosystem which is similar phenomenon as giant sites, eBay and Google, did. Louis Ramos, a fresh university student, is one of hundreds who runs MySpace user helping sites. MySpace users who 1 0 want customized desired looking profile pages simply visit MySpace-helping sites to feature their profiles. Louis Ramos said that he has made more than 200.000 dollars since last June by running his 2 MySpace-helping sites. [9] 3.2.3 Online Traffic As particular social networking sites took off in past a few years its representative MySpace has become the most visited online place. Its traffic increased more after acquisition unexpectedly 21.6 million unique users to 24.2 in September 2005 few months after acquired. MySpace US traffic was 51,441,000 in May 2006 which was as big as one-third of whole internet population in US as shown on table 1. [10] Table 1: Total internet population value [Comscore.com, 2006] Selected Social Networking Properties by Unique Visitors May 2006 Total U.S. – Home, Work and University Internet Users Source: comScore Media Metrix May-06 Property Total Internet Population MYSPACE.COM Classmates.com Sites FACEBOOK.COM YOUTUBE.COM MSN Spaces XANGA.COM FLICKR.COM Yahoo! 360° LIVEJOURNAL.COM MYYEARBOOK.COM (000) 172,120 51,441 14,792 14,069 12,669 9,566 7,146 5,163 4,936 3,904 3,048 4 Side Effects 4.1 Sexual Predator 1 1 Since social networking site has been place with freedom where teens can do what they want online it became abused place of predator. In fact number of men has been arrested for suspected sexual predators on MySpace. The predators abuse it to tell to young girls that they are teenagers as well and try to approach teens. Even though teens do not necessarily talk straight to predator teens upload their personal information and photos which show sceneries of place teens live. Social networking site is meant to be place where people make friends, upload photos, write personal interests, and information and it makes predators to be approaching teens to abuse easier. [11] 4.2 Personal Information Exposure It has become routine of internet users that people write emails, blogs, posting photos and personal information on the web. However people do not realize how much risky it can be. When people leave information on the web place abusers and hackers are surfing and reading it to abuse. As it has become one of the biggest side effects of social networking that teens should be aware of leaving any kind of information on the web. Also some social networking marketers are using copying personal photos and information to make up fake profiles to be shown as real person to advertise. [12] 5 Conclusion First generation of social networking failed due to technical setback that sites were not capable of handing increasing traffic. Recent social networking sites, however, are still taking off and number of sites got millions of registered users. The representative of social networking site, MySpace, became the busiest online destination which has twice Google traffic. It did not even need a decade to reach level MySpace and other successful sites are. Internet users visit and use it as a routine today. The social networking sites suddenly became new advertising generation as marketers aggressively use it. Around social networking sites especially MySpace there are a number of spin-offs targeting users of MySpace to help featuring personal profiles. Small companies are also contributing on this field as well. Social networking is not taking off alone but along with its derivatives. The biggest and well-known companies woo social networking sites. Google launched own social networking site Orkut this year 2006. Yahoo has Yahoo360 but still tries to acquire another successful site at 1 billion dollars. Bebo has already been asked several 1 2 times to be sold. Not only the biggest social networking sites but small ones are consistently sold online by entrepreneurs. However when many people are using and involved there are side effects. Online destination is not exceptional. Online method makes abusers to be comfortable being at home to be surfing on it. Teenagers are using social networking a lot. However there are no clear ways to avoid side effects in social networking system yet. Teens do not have good decisions and do not realize how dangerous how they behave online. But kids security technology growth rate seems to be slower than growth rate of social networking industry. It has become successful business item in short time. Proper methods for preventing few side effects it has would be developed in near future. Also social networking will be evolved to be more productive place than now it is place for fun. References 1 Nancy W. Schools and online social networking [online]. EducationWorld. URL: http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/issues/issues423.shtml. 12 April 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Nancy E. The “Myspace phenomenon” [online]. Galeschools. URL: http://galeschools.com/article_archive/2006/03/myspace.htm. March 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Ware R. How Myspace is antisocial [online]. Technology Review. URL: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id= 17328&ch=infotech. 18 Aug 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Julia A. Internet photo site helps Myspace thwart porn [online]. URL: http://pic.photobucket.com/press/05222006-wallstreetjournal.pdf. 16 May 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Dzoic. Social networking script [online]. URL: http://www.dzoic.com. 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Pete C. MySpace Worth $6 Billion, YouTube Copyright Fund is $200M [online]. Mashable. 2 3 4 5 6 1 3 URL: http://mashable.com/2006/11/14/myspace-worth-6-billion-youtubecopyright-fund-is-200m/. 14 November 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. 7 Pete C. Bebo Turns Down £300M [online]. Mashable. URL: http://mashable.com/2006/07/11/bebo-turns-down-%C2%A3300m/. 11 July 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Saul H. Yahoo Woos A Social Networking Site [online]. NYTimes. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/technology/22facebook.html ?ei=5088&emc=rss&en=09f3d5e70aa0f977&ex=1316577600&partner=rs snyt. 22 September 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Rachel R. The MySpace Economy [online]. Forbes. URL: http://www.forbes.com/home/digitalentertainment/2006/04/07 /myspace-google-murdoch-cx_rr_0410myspace.html. 4 October 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Steve R. MySpace growing even faster since acquisition [online]. BusinessWeek Online. URL: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/dealflow/archives/2005/ 11/myspace_growing.html. 14 November 2005. Accessed 20 November 2006. Susanna S. „Predator‟s Playground‟? [online]. MSNBC. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11065951/site/newsweek/. 27 Jan 2006. Accessed 20 November 2006. Unwitting Exposure: Does Posting Personal Information Online Mean Giving Up Privacy? [online]. Informit. URL: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=663314&rl=1. 3 November 2006. Accessed 1 December 2006. MySpace registration interface [online]. 2006. URL: http://myspace.com. Accessed 20 November 2006. One of ready-made templates for profile [online]. 2006. URL: http://pimpmyspace.org. Accessed 20 November 2006. Friend adder bot used profile on MySpace [online]. 2006. URL: http://friendbot.com. Accessed 20 November 2006. Selected Social Networking Properties by Unique Visitors [online]. May 2006. URL: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=906. Accessed 20 November 2006 8 9 10 11 12 Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Table 1