Social Networking: Observation&Research

Summarized from: Time

Facebook: More Popular Than Porn

By Bill Tancer

According to Bill, he claimed that Facebook actually changed the on-line behavior of young generation. For web users whose age are between 18-24, social network is on the top of the most clicked-on ranking category. By comparing the increasing visit rate of social network and the dropping visit rate of porn sites, he concluded that there is an obvious negative correlation between the visiting rate of porn sites and social-networking sites, which means that the young people are too busy chatting with their friends on facebook to visit porn sites. I think if the data and the comparing chart were accurate, this observation could be really interesting. Because it shows the importance of social-needs of young generation: it’s even more attractive than sex! Actually porn is not even on the second place, search engines is. The third one is web-based e-mail, porn sites is the fourth on the ranking list.

Summarized from: GigaOM

Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare?

Updated: Facebook’s Cruel Intentions

The article is about the concern of the privacy issue aroused by the unveil of Facebook Ad system called Beacon. This system, corresponding with other 44 sites, will automatically record every on-line activity of facebook users and send it back to facebook in order to help the sponsors of facebook to categorize their audiences more specifically. Although users do have the right to choose not sharing their activities history to their friends, these data might still be sent to facebook. Facebook claim later that this Ads-on system also provides the possibility for user to share their interesting actions taking on other websites with their friends in a convenient, time-saving way, and user have the right to choose not using it at all. However, it is an opt-out feature, not an opt-in one.

Summarized from: Time-blog.com

Stop friending me on face book

By Lisa Takeuchi

The author talked about how she found the notification systems of social networks annoying and disturbing by keep sending her e-mails and giving permission to some totally strangers to add her as friend, regardless her feelings and willing. She also talked about as one of the working professionals in her mid-30, she found the whole social-networking things not only too much time wasting, but also lead her nowhere.

I think the feedback of this article is even more interesting, some people talked about how much they agree with the author’s point of view, but at the same time all of their friends are on some social networks, so they have no choice to use them, otherwise it might jeopardize their social life. A guy mentioned that he refused all the “be friend” requests except those from his families, because his family members are used to tag photos to his accounts. He doesn’t want anybody else see those embarrassing photos.

The true story reflected the privacy issue of those so called “triangulations” happening on social networks, one of the problem of facebook is that once we join the system, we cant 100% avoid exploring ourselves regardless our own wills.

Summarized from: Pronet Advdertising

Socially Conscious Social Networking- Facebook Causes

This article introduce an special application developed by Project Agape called “Causes on Facebook”. The application allows one to create a cause and attract other members, for example: friends on your friend list, to join the activity, which can raise money and donate to the non-profit organization. The goal of this project, claimed by the developers, is by utilizing the active social activities to empower the individuals to change the world, it also provides a new mode for those non-profit organizations to grab attentions and raise money. They called this as “democratizing activism”. By far this application is actually functioning and some users created quite a successful cause that attracted about 18,500 people and raised about 3,000 dollars.