Social networking – the advantages and

disadvantages

Phil Bradley

www.philb.com

17th April 2008

Social networking sites

• Once upon a time we thought it was

Statistics

• Flickr 4,000,000

• LinkedIn 20,000,000

• Bebo 21,000,000

• Hi5 70,000,000

• Facebook100,000,000

• MySpace 110,000,000

So what can be done with a social network?

Key elements

• Locate and connect with friends or colleagues

• Connect to friends of friends (FOAF)

• Share information back and forth

• Keep up to date with events

• Find new friends

• Join discussion groups

And a few more…

• Instant messaging

• Private messaging

• Ask questions

• Answer questions

• Import content from different places

The case against

• They can waste huge amounts of time

• Privacy issues

• Danger – strangers!

Continued

• Individuals not representing company policy

• Keeping work/home personas apart

• Security concerns

• A nomadic lifestyle

… and again

The case for…

• Contact experts in subject areas

Some other social networking options

• Community search engines

• Spokeo

• Start/Home pages

Other options…

• Chat rooms

• RSS feeds

• Social bookmarking

The case for getting involved

• Go to where the communication is

• Facebook is more popular than Google for 18-24 age range

• 25%+ 8-11 y.o. have networking profiles

• 85% of students have a Facebook account

• Create your own pages, group(s) for promotion, information provision

• Provides more flexibility and functionality

The case against getting involved

Thank you!

• Phil Bradley – http://www.philb.com– philb@philb.com

Thanks to:• http://www.mediabistro.com/avantguild/images/social_networking_wheel.jpg

• http://www.mysocialnetwork.net/blog/481/r10/2006-10-25%20Blog%20Posting%207%20Picture.bmp

• http://polymer.bu.edu/~amaral/Sex_partners/images_klovdahl_small.jpg

• http://digitalwaveriding.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/map.jpg

•http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_04_08_ofcom.pdf