This is lecture 3 of a course on social media at the University of Winchester. This lecture looks at the history of social networking sites and in particular at Facebook. It examines the impact of the Like, Facebook login and open graph aspect in particular.

1. Lecture 3
Social networking Facebook and some
others…

2. Introduction
Defining SNS and the
difference between
networking and network.
A history of SNSs
Critical issues in SNS

3. The idea of Social Networks
 Lots of commentators have argued
that the things we do on social
media have been possible for a long
time.
 While not executed through
electronic media we have been able
the same things as SNS (and other
social media) for a long time.

4. E.G.
 Standage (2013) argues that in
ancient Rome Cicero (106 BC
– 43 BC) wrote letters for both
private and public consumption.
 People would bring him
information they wished to be
publically disseminated and
Cicero would collect
information from the Acta
Diurna (daily acts) state
documents published daily.
 Cicero was himself a social
networking site.

5. But…
 This is not really what we mean by
social media and especially SNS.
 Problem lies in that SNSs are a
technological facilitation of a social
practice.
 We already communicate but SNSs
allow us to do it technologically.
 So we need a proper definition.

6. Social network(ing) sites – a
definition
 Lots of definitions are possible and have
been proposed.
 A widely accepted one is that of boyd and
Ellison (2008: 211) who define SNS as
“web based services that allow individuals
to:
1. Construct a public or semi-public profile within
a bounded system;
2. Articulate a list of other users with whom they
share a connection, and
3. View and traverse their list of connections and
those made by others within the system.”

7. SNS are about existing
networks
 boyd and Ellison explicitly use network rather than
networking.
 The see SNS as ways of articulating and making
visible already existing social relations rather
than explicitly for making new links.
 An electronic Cicero.
 While making new links is possible they argue it is
not the point of these sites and is not what separates
them from other sites.
 So they are about networks rather than the activity of
networking.
 Does this hold true 6 years later?

8. Hmmm.
 If we concur with the definition we can
identify the first webpage that meets
these criteria and start to develop a
history of social media.

9. Six Degrees
 Started in 1997.
 Combined features found
on other distinct sites -
create profile, list
friends, surf friend‟s lists.
 Closed in 2000, not a
viable business model.
 Not enough actual
networks online – evidence
of argument that SNS are
about pre existing comms.
 Warning – there are lots of
companies using six
degrees in their title.

10. Lots of small community
specific ones began to emerge.
 EG Friends reunited
(2000).
 Got venture capital
investment.
 2000: 3000 members
 2001: 2.5 million members
 2005 15 million members;
sold to ITV for £120 million.
 Numbers started to drop but
made a profit in 2007 but was
sold for 25 million in 2009 to
Brightsolid Limited.
 2011 worth £5 million.
 2013 „reincubated‟
Aug 2000
Feb 2014
Dec2000

11. 2003 +
 Lots of SNS emerge.
 Hard to had short but glorious
lives: Friendster, some popular in
some locations but not others:
Orkut (google) very popular in
Brazil but unpopular in the USA.
 The „social nature‟ of social media
also impacted upon some - eg
MySpace did well because people
on Friendster said F was going to
start charging and they should
shift.

12. SNS global
 Different SNS seem to work in different
countries.
 US = MySpace
 UK = Bebo
 Orku = Brazil
 Mixi = Japan
 Lunar Storm = Scandinavia
 Cyworld = South Korea

13.  Started in 2005 and initially
only for Harvard, then other
Ivy League college students.
 Expanded to other
universities then high
schools, then everyone else.
 Sold shares in 2012 – total
valuation was $16 billion.
 1.23 billion monthly active
users as of December
31, 2013.
 757 million daily active users
on average in December
2013 average 20 mins per
visit.
 Made $1.5 billion and is
valued at $135 billion.

14. Has the bubble burst? No but…
 A recent report offers a picture that Facebook
may need to be wary:
 Youth not using Facebook as they did - use
alternative social media – snapchat.
 Maybe not a problem though as FB now has
significant non teen users and they shift less
than fickle, „zeitgeisty‟ youth who chase cool.
 Going mobile, while slow to start now very
strong – 53% of revenue comes from adverts
on mobile devices.

15. Market domination
 FB dominates
the social SNSs
market but
there are strong
(but much
smaller)
competitors in
other spheres.
 Work –
LinkedIn
 Even
academics –
Academia.ed
u

16. Critical issues
 A number of different critical areas in
SNS research:
 Impression management – what we say of
ourselves to others.
 The structure of a users connections –
nodes and interactions between networks.
 The off line / online connections.
 Privacy versus sharing.

17. Sharing and Privacy
 Many SNS companies emphasize sharing
– it is the common aspect of all SNS.
 It is often contrasted with Privacy.
 Historically Privacy has been a quality we
command - I can do what ever I wish with
my private information and privacy must be
defended.
 Zuckerberg argues that privacy is evolving
and changing and new interpretations of it
are now emerging.

18. However…
 A number of authors argue that it is not
privacy that is changing but sharing.
 For many sharing implies a sense of
„openness‟ of making the personal
available to others.
 In social media this sense is very strong
– we share what we want to disseminate
to others.
 However there is another sense of
sharing.

19. The other meaning of
sharing
 While we use FAB to share our information with
others, FB itself collates our information and
shares it with third parties - often for commercial
purposes.
 Thus sharing has evolved from peer to peer
sharing to peer to peer and by computation to a
third party.
 The SNS / computer networks „leverage‟ us to
derive profit.
 Our connectivity is a resource for the SNS
corporation – what I referred to last time as the
dialogic and enhanced sociability of social media.

20. How did we get here?
 Over the past 10 years there has been a
gradual change in the way we think about
sharing and privacy to the point where FBs
use of our data does not seem problematic.
 FB has „coded‟ the new meaning into its
systems and the semantic (widely accepted)
meaning has changed along with it.
 They changed was coded in two main
ways, one of which you will know and one you
may not:
 Like.
 Open Graph API

21. Beacon
 Fb made a big early mistake in sharing.
 It launched Beacon in 2007;
 Users enrolled by default (and initially they could not
opt out).
 Their data was sold to companies, and the
companies could target them and their friends
especially when you made a purchase.
 Lots of privacy issues violated – one website passing
on info to another.
 Lots of protest, FB changed apologised and closed
it.
 The problem was that it was too explicitly
commercial.

22. Facebook Platform
 FB launched a set of downloadable tools
that web developers could use to build
adds-ons for FB.
 The basic set included:
 Gifts, users send each other presents
 Marketplace, users make adds to sell things
 Events, make adds for events
 Video, upload and share video
 game, games where connections help you
advance.
 Also launched a subset of HTML FBML so
apps could be developed.

23. Lots of new stuff
 These APIs resulted in millions of new
games and apps being developed which
people install on their profile.
 In May 2010 these were added to –
open graph and „like‟.

24. Open Graph API
 Allows a FB login into a non FB page. “Login with
Facebook”.
 This links innumerable disparate parts of the web
together by the user‟s ID on FB.
 Moreover using the it initiates the start of the
Universal ID – a way of identifying all activity on
the web and tying it to a singular ID – every object
– picture, piece of music web page and every
person has a unique id with values attached.
 Every thing you have connected with when
associated with your FB id is tied to you.
 All your previously separate web activity linked.
{“id”: “797870155
″,
“name”: “Marcus
Leaning”,
“first_name”:
“Marcus”,
“last_name”:
“Leaning”,
“username”:
“Marcusleaning”,
“gender”: “male”,
“locale”: “en_UK”
}

25.  The „Like us on Facebook‟ button on many
pages does the same thing, but now it is not
just purchases but your
preferences, agreements and perhaps
moral actions that are now being tied to your
login – have you every liked something
„political‟?
 No longer just commercial activity but moral
ordering.

26. Sharing on new levels
 This is possibly more than most people
recognise by agreeing to the T and Cs of
Facebook in relation to sharing.
 But it is establishing the norm of the idea now.
 Sharing has moved on from:
 Me to my friends
 My FB info to companies who may sell me things
 My commercial activity „off FB‟ via FB login
 All my web activity tied to me through likes - BUT
NOT OWNED BY ME – and can be sold to other
companies, employers, credit scoring
agencies, political parties, governments…

27. So what?
 It has moved from companies targeting
you with ads to decisions being made
about you from data that you do not
have control over.
 This is „Big Data‟ - the mapping of your
life through data.
 Combined with „inferential learning‟
offers a range of problematic potential
futures…