1. OUR LIVES… ONLINE.

2. You would have to live under a rock to not know
about online social networking, let alone be
involved in it in some way. With its positives
and negatives, we are still continuing to push
our lives online and take use of the world that
is online social networking.

3. On October 4 2012, Facebook announced that it
had 1 billion active users each month. This is
around a sixth of the entire world’s
population that includes babies, the elderly
and people without access to technology.
Another way to see its size is by thinking if
Facebook was a country it would be the third
largest only behind China and India.

4. On announcement of this feat, Facebook
released this video demonstrating the power
and vast connectivity of the global social
networking phenomenon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7SjvLceXg
U

5. And this is just Facebook! Facebook is the most
used online social networking website, but
others are not far behind and continue to
grow! The next most popular include Twitter,
LinkedIn, Myspace, Google+, DeviantArt,
LiveJournal, Tagged, Orkut and Pinterest
rounding out the top ten.

6. So who makes up these 1 billion people?
According to the 2012 Social Network Analysis Report
by Ignite Social Media, more women use Facebook,
Twitter and Myspace than men, with LinkedIn being
fairly even.
And to the surprise of many, the younger audience is
always not the largest one! The 45-54 year old age
group was the most popular on Facebook, LinkedIn
and Myspace, and was not far behind the 25-34 year
olds on Twitter.
In terms of geography, Turkey is the country with the
highest use of Facebook, Venezuela dominates
Twitter, The Netherlands is the highest user of
LinkedIn, the highest use of Google+ is in Nepal, and
Puerto Rico is the most popular country for Myspace.

7. So these statistics are a bit all over the place!
We as a human beings love social networking,
and with increased accessibility and features,
online social networking is loved by all shapes
and kinds all over the world.

8. As the use of online social networking is on the
rise, the younger generation of people have
barely lived their lives without it, and in terms
of social standing, you don’t have a life unless
you engage in an online social network!
“When I ask teenagers why they joined
MySpace, the answer is simple: “Cuz that’s
where my friends are.” – Danah Boyd.

9. “I'm in the 7th grade. I'm 13. I'm not a cheerleader.
I'm not the president of the student body. Or
captain of the debate team. I'm not the prettiest
girl in my class. I'm not the most popular girl in
my class. I'm just a kid. I'm a little shy. And it's
really hard in this school to impress people
enough to be your friend if you're not any of
those things. But I go on these really great
vacations with my parents between Christmas
and New Year's every year. And I take pictures of
places we go. And I write about those places.
And I post this on my Xanga. Because I think if
kids in school read what I have to say and how I
say it, they'll want to be my friend.” – Vivien, 13,
to Parry Aftab during a “Teen Angels” meeting.

10. This goes to show, that online social networks
create a haven for young people, almost a
second home. They can be whoever they want to
be online. If they post a comment or a status
they realise they should have posted, they can
delete it. They have the choice of who sees their
profiles, and what pictures of theirs are
accessible and who they choose to be friends
with. Their online profiles create almost another
separate identity for them from the one they live
in the real world.

11. As these identities are created online, there can be
added pressure for youth to hold a certain
reputation on these websites. In a dog eat dog
world, popularity is a highly sought after
accomplishment. For young people, being well-
liked is often vital for surviving through school. As
our lives are now online, users thrive on likes,
positive comments, pokes and their quantity of
friends in order to boost their social standing.
“This increased awareness of others' minute actions
may have interesting implications for the way we
relate to others and understand ourselves.” –
Vladimir Barash.

12. “The breadth and importance of the peer group
during early adulthood is magnified by the
number of Facebook friends that students,
particularly young women, reported”- Tiffany
A. Pempek, Yevdokiya A. Yermolayeva,
Sandra L. Calvert.

13. Life is different online than it is in real life. Hiding
behind a computer screen can often enable
confidence in the user, and make them engage with
people they ordinarily wouldn’t. Social networks are
even a common place for shy singles to meet each
other!
“Even when using a very weak definition of “friend”
(i.e., anyone who a user has directed a post to at
least twice) we find that Twitter users have a very
small number of friends compared to the number of
followers and followees they declare. This implies
the existence of two different networks: a very
dense one made up of followers and followees, and a
sparser and simpler network of actual friends.”

14. However, this can lead to negative implications.
As discussed, people can be who they want to
be online and project a particular image to
their peers. So this can often lead to people
saying certain things and behaving in certain
ways that they wouldn’t ordinarily in real life.
Words can be a lot easier to say on a keyboard
rather than out loud, and with the
opportunity to post under a fake alias, it is a
lot easier to be crude without facing any
implications.

15. “Think of the ways we've used technology to
make our lives portable. Pervasive. With us all
the time. Now throw someone who doesn't
like you into that mix. The reason is
unimportant. What matters is they have a
presence in this portable world, as do you.
And with that point of connection the
taunting, the insults and the negativity are
now portable.” – William Cohen, ABC
Technology and Games.

16. The issue of privacy is also a downside of living our
lives on a publicly accessible sphere. There are
only 3.74 degrees of separation between every
single user of Facebook worldwide. Despite our
vast differences, we are all linked by this growing
phenomenon. This increases the accessibility of
our profiles, even with privacy settings.
“Even social networking websites that do not
openly expose their users’ identities may provide
enough information to identify the profile’s
owner” – Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti.

18. When we upload content up on to a website that
website gains all ownership of that information, and
we leave ourselves susceptible to having this
information used against us.
Every profile has certain information that is accessible
to anyone.
“By default, everyone on the Facebook appears in
searches of everyone else, independent of the
searchers institutional affiliation. In search results
the users’ full names (partial searches for e.g. first
names are possible) appear along with the profile
image, the academic institution that the user is
attending, and the users’ status there.” - Ralph Gross
and Alessandro Acquisti.

19. As so much information is available on social
networking websites, this lack of privacy can also
be used as a tool by some to gain certain
information.
Employers have been known to look on potential
employees pages to find out their
professionalism, past employment, relationships
and even what sort of personality they have.
As we are so willing to share details about
ourselves so publically, social networking also
opens up the likelihood of stalking, where the
stalker doesn’t even have to be seen by anyone
else to gain this information.

20.  “Using the information available on profiles
on the Facebook a potential adversary (with
an account at the same academic institution)
can determine the likely physical location of
the user for large portions of the day.” - Ralph
Gross and Alessandro Acquisti.

21. Despite the negatives of social networking, it is
gradually becoming the go to place, not only for our
identities as people, but also for everything else
surrounding us.
It is becoming a must-have of a Business to operate a
professional Facebook page. Due to its vast pulling
power, Facebook is the ultimate tool for businesses;
an easy, cheap outlet to advertise, place promotions,
gain attention and most importantly reach a wide
audience.
“Facebook offers so many opportunities to reach
customers with specialized advertising that almost
every business can benefit from some sort of paid
advertising on Facebook, even if it spends only a few
dollars a week” – Perry Marshall, Thomas Meloche.

22. Along with being a connection, online social
networking has also become a re-connection
for many. Allowing old schoolmates, work
colleagues, distant family relatives and alike
to reach each other through a simple, instant
resource.
Gone are the days of emails and letters. We can
now easily contact each other by a simple
tweet, wall post or comment for free and
without having to wait to receive these
messages.

23. So whether you see the increasing trend of
online social networking as a negative or a
positive thing, there is no denying or stopping
its might as a global entity. With its increased
accessibility, ease of use, and abilities, our
lives are shifting from real to virtual and only
time will tell how powerful this amazing
phenomenon will be.

24. Resources
Boyd, D 2007, ‘Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked PublicsTeenage Social
Life’ , MacArthur in Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media
Volume (ed. David Buckingham), MIT Press, Cambridge.
Gross, R 2005, ‘Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks (The Facebook case) Pre-
Proceedings Version’, ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES), 2005.
Barash, V., Ducheneaut, N., Isaacs, E., & Bellotti V 2010, Faceplant: Impression (Mis)management in
Facebook status ppdates. Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and
Social Media. Washington, DC.
Huberman, B. A., Romero, D. M., & Fang, W 2009, Social networks that matter: Twitter under the
microscope. First Monday, 14(1), 1.
Tiffany A. Pempek, Yevdokiya A. Yermolayeva, Sandra L. Calvert College students' social networking
experiences on Facebook• Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 30 (2009) 227–238.
eBizMBA 2012, Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites | October 2012,
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites.
Cohen, William 2012, Cyberbullying, Facebook and social media, ABC Technology and Games
Marshall, Perry, Meloche, Thomas 2011, Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising: How to Access 600
Million Customers in 10 Minutes, Ultimate Series, Entrepreneur Press.
Parker, Matt 2011, Facebook's '3.74 degrees of separation' is a world away from being significant, The
Guardian UK