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Revision as of 20:22, 14 November 2010
Contents
Human Dependency on various Social/Networking Systems
Thesis Statement
Thesis
To what extent has the human dependency on social networks increasing or has increased for interconnectivity?
Keywords
Human dependency on various systems Human dependency on social networks Socializing through networks Human dependent on social networks Human psychological dependency on social networks Human psychological dependency on communication networks
Bibliography
Structure and evolution of online social networks
Comparison of online social relations in volume vs interaction: a case study of cyworld
Student socialization in the age of facebook
Public vs. private: comparing public social network information with email
Social networking and scientific gateways
Social matching: A framework and research agenda
Trends, similarities, and differences in the usage of teen and senior public online newsgroups
Communications and open systems
Research Notes
Structure and evolution of online social networks
- It turns out that the density of social networks as a function of time is non-monotone.
- Passive users join the network out of curiosity or at the insistence of a friend, but never engage in any significant activity.
- Invitees are interested in migrating an offline community into an online social network, and actively recruit their friends to participate.
- Linkers are full participants in the growth of the online social network, and actively connect themselves to other members.
Comparison of online social relations in volume vs interaction: a case study of cyworld
- According to the Alexa.com; online social networking services are not only among the most popular but also have become a key feature in many Internet services.
- Users use social network for various purposes like making friend relationships, sharing their photos, their thoughts, sending messages and writing comments.
- These friend relationships become a key to many other features in web services, such as recommendation engines, security measures, online search, and personalization issues.
- We however, have very limited knowledge on how much interaction actually takes place over friend relationships declared online.
- A friend relationship only marks the beginning of online interaction.
- Does the interaction between users follow the declaration of friend relationship?
- Does a user interact evenly or lopsidedly with friends?
- A node represents a user and a directed edge a comments from a user to another. We call this network an activity network.
- Structural characteristics of the activity network has been analyzed and compared them with the friends network.
- Though the activity network is weighted and directed, its structure is similar to the friend relationship network.
- It is reported that the in-degree and out-degree distributions are close to each other and the social interaction through the guestbook is highly reciprocated.
- When we consider only those links in the activity network that are reciprocated, the degree correlation distribution exhibits much more pronounced assortativity than the friends network and places it close to known social networks.
- The k-core analysis gives yet another corroborating evidence that the friends network deviates from the known social network and has an unusually large number of highly connected cores.
- Its been delved into the weighted and directed nature of the activity network, and investigated the reciprocity, disparity, and network motifs.
- It has been also observed that peer pressure to stay active online stops building up beyond a certain number of friends.
- The activity network has shown topological characteristics similar to the friends network, but thanks to its directed and weighted nature, it has allowed us more in-depth analysis of user interaction.
- Macroscopically, the number of users, the number of daily visitors, and page views are the three most basic metrics to measure the status of online social networking services (OSNSs)
- How does information flow through the network?
- Do all users receive the same attention from their friends?
- How often do they interact?
- Is the interaction one-way or reciprocated?
- We would like to know if one’s number of friends plays an encouraging role, as the more friends have joined the same online social networking service, the more peer pressure one might receive.
- The young generation are more at ease and faster in adopting new technologies. Correlation between the group size and the age might reveal the generational gap quantitatively. Also the microscopic analysis of intra- and inter-group dynamics would provide baseline facts about online socializing behaviors.
Pros
Student socialization in the age of facebook
- Because students lead nomadic lives, they find Facebook a particularly useful tool for initiating and managing social gatherings, and as they adopt mobile technologies that can access online social networks, their ad-hoc social life is further enabled.
- We conclude that online social networks are a powerful tool for encouraging peripheral friendships, important in particular to students.
- We emphasize that the use of online social networks must be viewed from a perspective of use that involves both mobile and stationary platforms and that it is important to relate online and offline social practices.
- Services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace have spread rapidly, motivating researchers to explore these in terms of different issues.
- Where some have looked at self-presentation, others have looked at ‘friending’ and ‘grouping’ behavior within these networks.
- As a widespread social online network, Facebook is interesting to study because of its demonstrated strength of combining offline community with online community; its heavy use makes it relevant for research into structures and social practices.
- Today about 89% of US college students are members; the majority of students are active users of Facebook [18] and use it to maintain and build offline relationships.
- As a diverse user group, students possess a broad set of features that make them relevant for studying use of online social networks.
- They are unusually nomadic; they have classes and other academic activities at a variety of locations and at different times, often combined with working off-campus.
- At the same time their social sphere is wide: they have multiple sets of friends and acquaintances, as well as school-related contacts (teachers, dorm managers etc.) with whom they have daily interactions.
- They are therefore an interesting group of mobile workers to study in terms of how they integrate online social media into everyday life.
- We explore how university students integrate Facebook into their daily communication and social life.
- Our results point to the obvious social benefits of online social networks, but more specifically to the frequent occurrence of serendipitous social meetings facilitated by Facebook. We describe in which ways students integrated (particularly mobile) use of Facebook into their lives and how Facebook was useful for maintenance of particular peripheral friendships. We talk about how the genre of online social networks lends itself well to casual socialization. Finally, we point out that it is important to view the use of online social networks together with other means of communication, as part of an offline life where face-to-face socialization occurs with the same people as communicated with through online social networks. Online social networks should also not be viewed in isolation from their diverse access technologies any longer; it is important to consider their use in relation to the many possible means of access.
- Even before online social networks were as widespread as they are today, students considered email beneficial for social relations in college life.
- Other studies have showed that the Internet also helps students maintain close ties between family and friends, especially those too far away to visit in person on a regular basis, through, for example, instant messaging and chat programs. Baym et al., for example, looked at social uses of the Internet among US university students, however since the study predated Facebook they found no social interactions taking place through “newsgroups, MUDs, role playing games or any other Internet-enabled communication formats”. Similarly, Quan-Haase studied Canadian student use of communication technologies, contrasting between local and far-away relations; both studies found instant messaging a prominent environment for interacting.
- Even earlier, studies of social networks were often rooted in the notion of people’s ability to communicate over long distances, connecting people with mutual interests regardless of physical location.
- Facebook may help individuals to maintain pre-existing close relationships [18], which our study explores in further depth. In their recent Interactions article, they discuss how online social networks can mobilize social action within special interest groups and grassroots political activities.
- As we have noted, students have different lives from working adults; with socially complex nomadic lives and with the increase in smart phones, their use of social networking will likely be adjusted to mobile technologies.
- The mobile users were the eight participants who had mobile phones where they could access Facebook, all of whom used that method on a daily basis. The semi-mobile users were the five who tended to carry their laptop with them from place to place, using it in class, at coffee shops and in libraries for Facebook access (and other Web use)1. Finally, the last five participants were characterized as non-mobile, as they did not carry their laptop with them (if they had one) and primarily accessed Facebook from their home, work and occasionally from public PCs on campus, for example in the library.
- Communication (as with all other groups of people) was therefore essential and our participants used all available means, from email, course discussion forums and other Web services (e.g. wikis) to mobile phones, both voice and text.
- Facebook was very integrated into students’ communication patterns; they used it for maintaining their social life, scheduling meetings in professional clubs or volunteer work or arranging studyrelated meetings or class-related information exchange. They were very loyal to Facebook; under probing, they all insisted that it was necessary in order to keep in touch with all their friend and acquaintances.
- One participant, for example, found it particularly appropriate as a communication mechanism when she was involved in recruiting newcomers for her sorority. She explained that she normally would not think of telephoning many of the people on her Facebook friend list, but felt fine about communicating with them through Facebook:
- It helps to forge bonds with people who they hardly know or see but still need to meet in order to discuss about project or jobs.
- Sometimes they used facebook to interact with people who they dont want to have close relationships with and therefore, would rather message them than call them.
- Status messages can be used as reminders.
- Students used Facebook to not only plan socialization with friends but also to overcome their shyness over contacting peripheral friends directly.
Cons
- people are more dependent on social networks for interaction.
- If they want to invite or recruit someone, they would not telephone them but instead use online networks to invite or communicate.
- People reply on friends status or messages to be reminded about an event/party or to be invited out for lunch/dinner/meeting.
Public vs. private: comparing public social network information with email
Information
Many organizations today have blogging systems, wikis, forums, and even social bookmarking and social networking services behind the firewall.
Pros
Systems like blogs, wikis, forums, social bookmarking, or social networking services, expose a lot of social network information, which is public in its nature. For example, in many blog systems, everyone may see who makes comments to whom; in many wiki systems, everyone can see who edits the same pages; in many social bookmarking systems, everyone can see who bookmarks the same web pages or uses the same tags; and in many social networking sites, everyone can see by default who is friends with whom. Thus, social applications such as those mentioned above provide a wide range of public sources for social network information.
Cons
Having more and more valuable public sources for social network information, both on the internet and on the intranet, presents an opportunity to collect social network information in a way that is less sensitive privacy-wise.
Summary
Humans now a days rely too much on online networking sites for basic communication. Online networking has become a major tool or source in order to interact or communicate between users of different age groups. It is most popular with students with nomadic life. Due to the smart phones like blackberry or iPhone etc, or phones which are web enabled, these online networks have become even more popular. It helps to forge bonds with people who they hardly know or see but still need to meet in order to discuss about project or jobs. Sometimes they used networking tool to interact with people who they don't want to have close relationships with and therefore, would rather message them than call them. People reply on friends status or messages to be reminded about an event/party or to be invited out for lunch/dinner/meeting.
