Social Networking Sites (SNS): Landscape of possibilities and trends
Globally in the last ten decade, social networking sites have created great social change in terms of culture and the way we communicate. Not limited to Europe or North America, SNS’s are springing in countries such as China with QQ.com or Renren.com, Cyworld in South Korea, the Google owned Orkut in India and many other. Ever since SNS’s have hit the main stream a few years ago, it has become a great topic of discussion. During the United States Presidential Election of 2008, people witnessed one of the greatest effects of how communication and social network sites have managed to alter the landscape of possibilities and trends.
Social Networking sites are a new communication tools found since the boom of the internet but it only replicates the way we have always been communicating with each other. For example, people have been sharing photos since the inception of the camera. However with SNS’s, we can now share this information broadly with minimal transaction costs. At the same time, people can now leave comments on the photographs, tag who is in the picture and provide more meaning to a photograph. This allows us to “digitally represent our connections with other users-meaning that we can use these ites tto model our network of social relationships”. (Social Network Sites and Society: Current Trends and Future Possibilities, 2009 ACM, Ellison/Lampe/Steinfield)
Social Network sites also provide space to retain relationships digitally. In scenarios described by Social Network Sites and Society: Current Trends and Future Possibilities, weak acquaintances or meetings can encounter many pitfalls from reconnecting, such as a meeting in the park can lose it’s adhesiveness. However, using the low entry barrier of social network sites, this relationship can be retained as a “weak tie”. The benefits of “weak ties” are not immediately apparent. “Our weak ties are valuable conduits to diverse perspectives and new information; research has show that we are more likely to receive information about an employment opportunity from someone we see rarely”(Social Network Sites and Society: Current Trends and Future Possibilities, 2009 ACM, Ellison/Lampe/Steinfield).
Though SNS’s have been a part of the mainstream since 2003, users are still struggling with privacy and online identities. As evidenced by www.lamebook.com discovering embarrassing moments on social networks have become an activity in itself. However this is not isolated to people revealing their own personal feelings, what is considered acceptable online interaction is still in it’s infancy and evolution. Many of the posts on www.lamebook.com also include the responses people post when responding to someone’s personal online revelation.
A disturbing trend in SNSs is the increasing possibility of people narrowing where their information flow comes from. Previously the public was informed through packages and bundles of information printed out on paper. As you already know, I am describing newspapers. During the process of unfolding a newspaper bundle, the reader will grab what is considered important news. This is what is printed as headlines and on the front page. The news might not be what the reader would like to read, but if a story is on the front page it gives the story a significant status, meaning you may not want to read it, but you should probably know about it. However in the new web world this has changed, and social networking sites haven’t necessarily eliminate this information polarization.
Now that information is fragmented into many pieces across the web, people can choose to read what they would like how to read. However “a concern raised by Cass Sunstein is that Internet use will allow people to increasingly exclude viewpoints that conflict with their own, creating a bubble of information in which individuals are exposed only to data that reinforce their current opinion”.(Social Network Sites and Society: Current Trends and Future Possibilities, 2009 ACM, Ellison/Lampe/Steinfield) This is demonstrated by the number of political blogs that lean only towards the left or the right of the political spectrum, such as The Huffington Post or Think Progress.
One reason for this is that a site has a certain value and the users know this. “Value ares built into social software and spread through the networks of people who join. This is why most of these sites are so tech-centric. Because social software is all about the collective, the early values often get reinforced on the entrance page.”(The Significance of Social Software, Danah Boyd, 2006) Using the social news sharing website www.Digg.com as an example, the news stories that populate the front can range from a new tutorial for CSS development to a basketball star’s retirement. If one were to only visit Digg for news, the information absorbed for the day may exclude headline international news that are on the front page of news websites. This can lead to group polarization as users on Digg may find the tops stories on Digg’s website as the most important news, potentially ignoring other international news and other dissenting opinion because users do not find that piece relevant and worthy of the front page.
In the end, a user’s choice of which social networking site is based on cultural and social values. The reason more people in China use renren.com instead of Facebook might not just be because the fact that Facebook is blocked in China. Many young people already know how to “hop” across the “Great Firewall of China”. Like Facebook, many Chinese students began using renren.com because it was previously known as xiaonei.com, which targeted the social values of University students. Orkut became popular in Brazil, though initially a United States site, “folks in Brazil started realizing that they could be US in the listings…..At some juncture, there was a tipping point after which it was seen as a Brazilian site and Brazilians joined with such nationalist encouragement.” (The Significance of Social Software, Danah Boyd, 2006) As we look further, we may see more group polarization and value sovereignty in social network sites, however this could all scale in different ways as more data becomes portable across the web.
March 29th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
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