A
social network service focuses on the building and verifying
of
online social networks for communities of people who
share interests and activities, or who are interested in
exploring
the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates
the use of software.
Most social network services are primarily web based and
provide a collection of various ways for users to interact,
such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing,
blogging, discussion groups, and so on.
The main types of social networking services are those which
contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates),
means to connect with friends (usually with self-description
pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular
methods now combine many of these, with MySpace, Bebo and
Facebook being the mostly widely used in 2007.
Some people
say that various social networking sites 'own the IP' of
anything you upload. This isn't true - they can't
stop you ever using or selling your own content, but it IS
true that their terms and conditions may give them the right
to use it - especially if you tick a 'Creative Commons' licence,
in which case pretty much anyone's allowed to use it. See
recent Virgin Mobile/Flickr Are
You With Us Or What campaign.
Facebook:
Flavour
of the month (this being October, 2007). Jumped ahead of
MySpace due to adpotion of 3rd party apps. MySpace
will soon be following suit.
Criticised
by employers due to time-wasting
potential (eg casual-games you can play with friends).
Although once it was Solitaire... and before that, smoking....
On the
other hand, many people (including me) use
Facebook for business and shun the 'Vampires' and 'Likeness'
type apps.
Actual
names are used for Facebook, whereas MySpace discourages
use of real names. You can tailor your Privacy settings
on Facebook, eg to hide yourself, but then that would kinda
defeat the point.
Facebook
was originally intended to be used by college students,
so many aspects of the profile reflect that.
Networks
were originally colleges, then employers. In countries
where it was adopted later such as Australia, the only
Networks available are those of large multinational companies
(if you happen to work for IBM or Microsoft, for example)
but for the rest of us here, there is only Australia.
If someone
is in the same Network as you, you can see more of their
details by default than you can for someone who is not
in the same Network, so it's a good idea to set your network
to Australia and you can see the full profiles of people
- makes it a lot easier to work out if it's THAT Ian Smith
or Daisy Flootlemeister (although you'll probably still
only manage to find your friends with unusual names by
searching, and then rely on them to find your other friends).
We use
Facebook for basic social networking (you'd be surprised
at some of the people you find on there - some seriously
senior geek-elite whoa re addicted to Scrabulous), but
also for Groups and Events. MySpace had those
same functions, but to be honest they were HORRIBLE to
use, and so basically only very patient and persistance
spammers did.
A hot
topic at the moment is developing Facebook
apps. While there is discussion going on about whether
or not developing apps is Long
Tail or not, the fact is they're SHRN (So Hot Right
Now). Facebook
Developer Garages are springing up on our
doorstep - why not here too?
MySpace:
We're
such fickle creatures, aren't we? A year ago it was MySpace,
MySpace and now I hardly check my MySpace accounts any
more. I haven't put our
upcoming events on the VJzoo MySpace for months.
It still
has some life left in it, though - especially for music
industry. It really has made a huge difference to the average
non-geek bands ability to market themself - throw up a
few songs, a few pics, maybe a video and list the gigs.
That's all they ever really wanted to do, and making and
maintaining a website BEFORE MySpace was just beyond the
means and interest of the average band.
So much
of MySpace is an unwieldy operation though. Putting in
events, for example. Gah! I think that's the main reason
Facebook overtook it.
For certain
purposes, MySpace still rocks. eg the Inde Film Festival
circuit.
If you
don't want to infect your visitors with 'Macy's Voucher'
viruses, I suggest disabling html in your comments.
Linked
In:
Now
THIS social networking site means business.
Basically
this is a resume site where you network with business
colleagues and clients. You can write recommendations
for each other, too.
Be
careful of the automatic add-your-contacts type function
that searches your web-based email and invites them to
be your contact. If, like me, you have people with whom
you've emailed but who you DON'T really know (eg people
you bought something off on eBay two years ago) and they
respond by saying they don't know you, once you have
a few of those you lose the ability to invite new contacts
unless you know their email address.
On
this site, your capital is basically who-you-know.
