Social Networking Sites

TUTORIAL TASK

I created a survey on usage of social networking sites using SurveyMonkey. My questions mainly focused on user history of social media sites, time spent online and their effects on socialising in person. Initial results indicate that those surveyed have increased online activity over the past six months and that Facebook is still their primary online social network. More detailed results will be posted next week.


READINGS

This weeks readings provided a detailed analysis of the history and nature of social networking sites. The concept of churn seems highly significant to the study of social media, with the idea that such sites do have a shelf life. It will be interesting to see if and when Facebook succumbs to the churn.

Another interesting aspect of the readings was the early history of social networking sites in the Boyd and Ellison article (2007). MySpace was the earliest social network site that I was aware of, and I was a little surprised to learn that the first site to incorporate features such as profiles, sending messages, friend lists and the ability to "surf the Friends list" (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) was SixDegrees.com back in 1997/1998.

References

Boyd, D and Nicole Ellison 2007, 'Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship', Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, vol. 13, no. 1.