Social Networking Essays - Social Information Processing

Social Networking INF 103 Instructor: April 11, 2011 Figure 1: Page 11 Shows timeline for social networking Definition The term ?social networking? does not exclusively belong to digital technology on the Web. On the contrary, social networks had been studied from the beginning of 20th century with the aim to comprehend how the members of a certain community interact and which mechanism can determine the interaction itself. Today social networking commonly refers to all those activities that are carried out within specific online services that provides free space and software tools which allow to create networks of people. In other words, a social networking service is a Web site that allows individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile. The mechanism is the following: social networking services enable users to create a profiles for them, by inserting their personal data. Users? data are not only constituted by vital statistics, but they include a lot of other information which pertains to user hobbies, passions, interests, professional background and so on. This kind of personal data, all spontaneously provided by the user her/himself, permit to create interconnected networks of people who decide to put in common their interests and to have an online identity this fully describes them. The great strength of social networking are the multiple ways the users have to interact. Below is a list of the main communication resources used to build social networks: ?chat; ?messaging; ?wiki; ?email; ?video; ?voice; ?file sharing; ?blogging; ?discussion groups. Brief History All the technologies listed above are not new to the Web users who had been surfing the Web during the last ten years, but today we label ?social networking sites? those which ?reinvented? these technologies in commercial and non-commercial ways. Early social networking sites, like Classmates.com (used to find, connect and keep in touch with old school friends), go back to 1995, while recent phenomenon, such as Facebook and MySpace, go back to 2003. In the figure that follows there is a timeline (it starts from 1997) where it is possible to note the increasing number of social networking sites during the last four/five years. It will be useful to remind that not all these Web sites constitutes ?real? new service, but in many cases they are only a marketing strategy adopted to re-launch certain brands. Context It is not possible to describe social networking without considering the current status of the Web, this is commonly defined as ?2.0?. The biggest innovation in Web 2.0 is the possibility for users to directly and easily create contents, even if they do not possess technical skills. This content production is continuous and the social networking sites that are seeing strong growth is continually refreshed by user generated content. In particular, all the software tools that deal with digital communities are available for free and are very easy to use; as a consequence, every user can add or modify contents, search for existing ones and be part of a large number of communities. Everyone can be an author. Below are some data that summarize the growth of social networking service and their general relevance. In the table are listed ten social networking sites; for each site are indicated in column the millions of unique visitors for April 2005 and April 2006, and the year over year growth percentage. See Excel Chart Applications for ITDE Social networking represents a big resource for e-learning, because of its big impact on the World Wide Web. In fact, the social networking online services implemented a new model of knowledge management, totally based upon the worldwide voluntary contribution of users. But to what extent is social networking powerful for distance education? It is very interesting to point out that the average age of social networking users is strongly and quickly decreasing; the new generations seem to be extremely familiar with this kind of approach to the Web. According to a January 2007 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 55 percent of teens (ages 12 to 17) report having created a personal profile online, and an equal number regularly use social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. Of those, 91 percent use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently. With all that screen time, students are acutely attuned to - and sometimes more comfortable with - living in the digital world. Thus, it follows that their teaming should become more digital, say proponent of social networking in distance education. For these reasons, social networking is a big resource for ITDE designing and developing and it could become the ?Trojan horse? to ameliorate the effectiveness of distance education