Research on Social Networks

Accurate Data about Social Networks

There are lots of media articles about dangers of Facebook, MySpace, Insert your favourite social network service. The New York Times is a good source, as is the BBC. There is relatively little hard research, either on the number of people using social network services, the demographics (age group, sex) or on how they are used.

There is one researcher actively working on social networks, and that is danah boyd (sic) variously of the University of California-Berkeley and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. Intern at Google. Not an academic lightweight then.

• danah's web site http://www.danah.org/
• danah's research papers http://www.danah.org/papers/
• danah also has a blog to discuss her latest thinking in social networks: Apophenia http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/bestof.html

danah's research breaks down into a number of areas

Overviews

Overviews of social network services, including contributions to BT and Vodafone. These are short summaries for a general business or technical audience

• "Public displays of connection." Judith Donath and danah boyd. (2004, October). BT Technology Journal 22(4), pp 71-82. http://www.danah.org/papers/PublicDisplays.pdf
• “Socializing digitally.” danah boyd. (2007, June). Vodafone Receiver Magazine 18: The Home. http://www.danah.org/papers/VodafoneReceiver.pdf

Identity Management

Identity management in social networks, including the requirements for identity management, and the technical issues of various identity management models. This is particularly important to telcos given the recent announcements from the OpenID Foundation.

• danah's thesis from MIT "Faceted Id/entity: Managing Representation in a Digital World." danah boyd. Cambridge, MA: MIT Master's Thesis. August 9, 2002" http://www.danah.org/papers/Thesis.FacetedIdentity.pdf. Describes identity management systems as a potential control point, with Microsoft Passport as one example. It includes a technical analysis of the ways in which social networks are constructed, often out of relatively independent sub-nets. Finally there is a chapter on SecureId, an identity management tool for the end user.

History of Social Networks

• The rise and fall of various of social network sites. Facebook and MySpace were not the first social networks, not by a long way, since SixDegrees started in 1997. This also discusses what features do and don't work.
• "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship." danah boyd and Nicole Ellison. (2007, October). Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. http://www.danah.org/papers/JCMCIntro.pdf

Use of Social Networks

How social networks are actually used - the anthropology of social networks - based on interviews and an analysis of 10000 profiles. Has some interesting insights about the differences between MySpace and Facebook in the USA.

• "Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life." danah boyd. MacArthur Foundation on Digital Learning, Identity Volume (ed. David Buckingham). MIT Press. http://www.danah.org/papers/WhyYouthHeart.pdf
• "Friends, Friendsters, and MySpace Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites." danah boyd. (2006, December). First Monday 11(12). http://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsFriendsterTop8.pdf

Other Sources

The Pew Internet and American Life Project and Harris Interactive are also actively publishing research on the use of internet communications.

• Teens and Social Media (Dec 2007) contains the observation that 64% of teens (12 to 17) have created online content. The Web 2.0 generation is here!
• Trends and Tudes Volume 6 Issue 2 (Feb 2007) has data on how often people use different types of communication. In the US, the usage of email, instant messaging and social networking websites exceeds text messaging in the 12-17 age group.

Conclusions

There is a huge age bias in the current use of social network sites. There are some interesting implications for the providers of social networks, which for example some telcos are looking to become. The importance of an identity management model and the supporting technology is key. The requirements are more complex that they appear to be at first, since one technical issue is how to provide multiple identities or identity personas?