Introduction
Today, hundred millions of online traffics surge into social networking sites such as MySpace, CyWorld, QQ everyday; generation X and Ys are pressured to spending hours and hours to make their profiles and blog pages prettier; Giant business conglomerates are finding their ways to flood their money into those sites; while start-up entrepreneurs are dying for the secrets of such flying economy. To this new world, it welcomed the growing commercial significance of the aggregation of those sites: the invasion of business into the friends group, the buyout of the sites ownership, the emergence of viral marketing era. But in fact, what this social trend did is unprecedentedly intensified the tensions between social networking sites and their dependent communities.
In this essay, I will analysis how social networking sites have extended the possibilities of networking in relations to their growing commercialisation.
More possibilities? = Convergence of ICT applications
“A "social network site" is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile.” - Danah Boyd
According to Danah Boyd’s definition of social networking sites, these sites are just a category of websites that utilise a number of existing Internet applications such blogs, video and audio player, personal page, photo hosts, etc. to provides a both public and private sites for people to have an virtual identity and be able to socialise with others. But importantly, they are able to expend people’s networks beyond what could be imagined, that is why social networking sites are becoming exceptional popular.
[as] Material support for networked individualism
“The dominant trend in the evolution of social relationships in our societies is the rise of individualism, in all its manifestations. It is cultural in the sense of material culture, that is, a system of values and beliefs informing behaviour that is rooted in the material conditions of work and livelihood in our societies.” Castells Maneul (2001) “The Internet Galaxy”
Social networking sites structure social relationships in terms of sociability of individualism. As Castells remarked that individualism becomes the dominant trend in today’s society, people now are having more needs of expressing themselves than ever before, or they want to meet more and more people today. And such individualism is expressed as “emphasized the emergence of a new system of social relationships centred on the individual. Personalized communities embodied in the me-centred networks” (Castells Manuel 2001). Social networking sites full-fill this needs by providing the material support for such individualism and social needs. Any social needs are about by communications, as individualism also means the needs not only to express oneself, but also to engage in the meaningful social segments.
But social networking sites cannot be there for free material support. The motivation for entrepreneurs who created those sites is not just for people socialising. Under the “eye ball” economy and the growth of E-commerce, online traffic meaning everything to a websites. Hence social networking sites as their nature of being websites, have to survive by generating cash flows by banner advertising. It is important for us to know that the link between the virtual world cannot be broken from the reality. Websites and Internet connections are running by computers in the real society. Producers of social networking sites are normal humans that lives in reality, they need income to survive.
[its] Connecting properties
Social networking sites enabled people to engage in those egocentric networks by its powerful connecting properties. The significance of extending the networking on social networking sites is firstly lowering the barriers to access these sites, and then lowering the barriers to access other people’s networks.
New software in the social networking sites are organized in the way which users are easy to understand, and abundant information are provided to instruct the operation of these Internet applications. Such effort has effectively lowered the barriers to entry that previously restricted web publishing (Fred Scharmen 2006). Now, Users with no knowledge of html can create an instant websites with music and photos by using free instructions from the website or individuals.
Social networking sites also extend the possibility of networking by capturing as many networks as possible for users. Whenever a new user joins a social networking site, they are firstly asked to invite their friends through email address. Since many social networking sites are using email addresses as username, such as Facebook, they will automatically ask for the password for access the email box where they could found your email contact lists, and invite friends from these existing lists. More importantly, they enable users to view four and even more level of contacts: their friends’ contacts, their friends’ friends and their friends’ friends’ friends as well. Such extending of contacts instantly creating a wide networking that one could hardly get offline.
This too access allows those social networking sites to attract millions of users, and notably social networking sites could not extended the networking possibility on their own, but rather, relying on the users. Thus only the successful social networking which have the most attractive features and be able to attract active users that could extend their other users. And then the number of users turns into the profitability of the websites, which created a chain of values via connectivity.
Value Chain
In this value chain, social networking sites are the initiator as we as the host of the operations. The creator the social networking sites has to firstly construct the websites, and responsible for managing the sites. They create value by attracting users, the more users they attract, and the more value they created. But they also utilise their existing users and their resources as a selling point to attract more users. These values are expressed as the number of users on the sites, and also the traffics on the sites. And then, these values are transferred to the commercial part – advertisers, where large commercial conglomerates are. They found these traffics as segments of the market, and the social networking websites created a new way for them to access those markets. Finally the value becomes the money that pays to the websites, where the creators eventually received their payback.
The value chain does not create any form of tension, but rather, a very well-structured relationship. The problem within commercialisation are not caused by the value chain, but rather, the over flow of the value.
The over flow of the value is caused by the attraction of the social networking sites. since those social networking site are too good to be true, both users and business need it, not only wants.
It is significant that without any technological support for communications, people would found very difficult to keep networking ties with a lots of people. Internet removed the geographic barriers of networking ties, as Castells mentioned “The Internet is effective in maintaining weak ties, which other wise could be lost in the trade-off between the effort to engage in physical interaction, including telephone interaction and the value of the communication” (Castells Manuel 2001, p129).
Social networking sites keep those weak networking ties better than any IM applications. People not only can link to their offline contact on the sites, but also able to search last contacts, make new contact with people that went to the same school, company, and have the similar interest, or even randomly making new contact by browsing the sites. By having these contacts linked on the sites, these networks will be kept as long as the user still exits on the site.
Social networking sites also have a positive effect on social interaction, and it tends to increase exposure to other sources of information, Di Maggio etc, (2001) reported that Internet users attended more arts events read more literature went to more movies , wathed more sports and played more sports than non users (Castells Maneul the Internet Galaxy).
As more and more people adopted social networking sites, they become users from subscribers, become more depended on those sites. Those benefits and values that users could gain from social networking sites become a part of everyday life. As Donah Boyd discussed how the networking sites closely linked teenagers’ life, it is hard to say that generation X and Y could possibility live without it if they have used and reply on it for communication. Because it they do not use these sites anymore, it means they will lose all valuable networks, or even, the ability of communication.
[as] Public Personal Multi-Media - Enhanced information flow
Social networking sites are becoming a new form of media that broadcasts from the individual to the mass, which hand out all the power of the media to the users. These social networking sites, empower users to have their own media content and channels. To do so, they provide users means of creating media content such as general blog and forums, bulletins on MySpace, noticeboards etc.; selective media channels such as video, audio player, blogs as printing media, and connectivity with other people as well as access to other people’s networks. As Dewolfe, Chris (2007) described that these social networking sites are one-to-many mediums that like “the analog of public spaces like the mall and the neigborhood”.
By using such one-to-many public personal media participants are able to express who they are by personalise not only the content of the page but also the interactive presentations of the page such as video and pictures. Moreover, as apart of the websites’ community and organization, users are also able to locate themselves culturally by join different groups according to their interests, where egocentric networks replace groups (Danah Boyd). “In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame through which they can properly socialize with other participants” (Danah Boyd 2006), and also created a way to interact with people as well as provides useful information for their networks.
The public personal media then will form new web of networks through social networking sites’ connecting property, and generates new ways of information flow. The most significance of recent social networking sites’ development is the adoption of Web 2.0 technology. Unlike Web 1.0 where websites controls mass channels for information flow, Web 2.0 offers a board way of information flow which is almost the same as major websites for user generated content.
Take Myspace as an example. It offers a far more immediate and intuitive means of two-way communication than has ever existed which enabled significant information flows through users voluntary mediation and reporting. Danah Boyd also found that “the acts of information dissemination certainly raise possibilities concerning the political efficacy of social network sites”, which indicates that when content that shared on these sites are relevant to individuals, they consumer it and then share it (Danah Boyd 2001).
Therefore, “social networking sites have the potential to redemocratize politics, or even to commercialise products and brands across the world” (Danah Boyd 2001). As the director of MySpace Chris Dewolfe believed that these social networking are at its very best, and just begins the revolutions of social networking and information flow, and “this revolution will not be televised--it will be Webcast. It's already happening” (Chris Dewolfe 2007).
It could also predict that public personal media could be more powerful than traditional media. As today more and more people especially generation X and Y are turning off from the traditional platforms, they are moving towards to micro-media forms such as blogs and these social networking sites to obtain information. Therefore, business has to move towards social networking sites to be able to communicate with these people. Significantly, as more and more generation X and Y moves to the workforce, they become more profitable consumers. Hence to business, being able to contact with them means being able to sell to them in the future.
However, users data and content they created becomes the assets for social networking sites. For example, “the data collected by Myspace is a saleable asset. In August 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought Myspace’s parent company, Intermix Media, for $580 million” (Fred Scharmen 2006)
The tension between users and business are then intensified by the underground trading of data to the business. Moreover, as users’ content are publicly on the social networking sites, business are able to search for their targeted consumer and then link to them as a friend, which arise the question of being ethical.
Conclusion
To conclude, social networking sites are operating in a well-structured value chain. It creates value to users and business as networks of public personal media. Tensions are created by the over-flow of value on both side of the chain: users are becoming more and more depended on the sites as means of networking and communication; at the same time, business has to rely on it to communicate with hard-to-reach markets. There is no way to get way from this tension, and I would say that these tensions are just part of the dynamics of the online world, it comes and goes.
Today, hundred millions of online traffics surge into social networking sites such as MySpace, CyWorld, QQ everyday; generation X and Ys are pressured to spending hours and hours to make their profiles and blog pages prettier; Giant business conglomerates are finding their ways to flood their money into those sites; while start-up entrepreneurs are dying for the secrets of such flying economy. To this new world, it welcomed the growing commercial significance of the aggregation of those sites: the invasion of business into the friends group, the buyout of the sites ownership, the emergence of viral marketing era. But in fact, what this social trend did is unprecedentedly intensified the tensions between social networking sites and their dependent communities.
In this essay, I will analysis how social networking sites have extended the possibilities of networking in relations to their growing commercialisation.
More possibilities? = Convergence of ICT applications
“A "social network site" is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile.” - Danah Boyd
According to Danah Boyd’s definition of social networking sites, these sites are just a category of websites that utilise a number of existing Internet applications such blogs, video and audio player, personal page, photo hosts, etc. to provides a both public and private sites for people to have an virtual identity and be able to socialise with others. But importantly, they are able to expend people’s networks beyond what could be imagined, that is why social networking sites are becoming exceptional popular.
[as] Material support for networked individualism
“The dominant trend in the evolution of social relationships in our societies is the rise of individualism, in all its manifestations. It is cultural in the sense of material culture, that is, a system of values and beliefs informing behaviour that is rooted in the material conditions of work and livelihood in our societies.” Castells Maneul (2001) “The Internet Galaxy”
Social networking sites structure social relationships in terms of sociability of individualism. As Castells remarked that individualism becomes the dominant trend in today’s society, people now are having more needs of expressing themselves than ever before, or they want to meet more and more people today. And such individualism is expressed as “emphasized the emergence of a new system of social relationships centred on the individual. Personalized communities embodied in the me-centred networks” (Castells Manuel 2001). Social networking sites full-fill this needs by providing the material support for such individualism and social needs. Any social needs are about by communications, as individualism also means the needs not only to express oneself, but also to engage in the meaningful social segments.
But social networking sites cannot be there for free material support. The motivation for entrepreneurs who created those sites is not just for people socialising. Under the “eye ball” economy and the growth of E-commerce, online traffic meaning everything to a websites. Hence social networking sites as their nature of being websites, have to survive by generating cash flows by banner advertising. It is important for us to know that the link between the virtual world cannot be broken from the reality. Websites and Internet connections are running by computers in the real society. Producers of social networking sites are normal humans that lives in reality, they need income to survive.
[its] Connecting properties
Social networking sites enabled people to engage in those egocentric networks by its powerful connecting properties. The significance of extending the networking on social networking sites is firstly lowering the barriers to access these sites, and then lowering the barriers to access other people’s networks.
New software in the social networking sites are organized in the way which users are easy to understand, and abundant information are provided to instruct the operation of these Internet applications. Such effort has effectively lowered the barriers to entry that previously restricted web publishing (Fred Scharmen 2006). Now, Users with no knowledge of html can create an instant websites with music and photos by using free instructions from the website or individuals.
Social networking sites also extend the possibility of networking by capturing as many networks as possible for users. Whenever a new user joins a social networking site, they are firstly asked to invite their friends through email address. Since many social networking sites are using email addresses as username, such as Facebook, they will automatically ask for the password for access the email box where they could found your email contact lists, and invite friends from these existing lists. More importantly, they enable users to view four and even more level of contacts: their friends’ contacts, their friends’ friends and their friends’ friends’ friends as well. Such extending of contacts instantly creating a wide networking that one could hardly get offline.
This too access allows those social networking sites to attract millions of users, and notably social networking sites could not extended the networking possibility on their own, but rather, relying on the users. Thus only the successful social networking which have the most attractive features and be able to attract active users that could extend their other users. And then the number of users turns into the profitability of the websites, which created a chain of values via connectivity.
Value Chain
In this value chain, social networking sites are the initiator as we as the host of the operations. The creator the social networking sites has to firstly construct the websites, and responsible for managing the sites. They create value by attracting users, the more users they attract, and the more value they created. But they also utilise their existing users and their resources as a selling point to attract more users. These values are expressed as the number of users on the sites, and also the traffics on the sites. And then, these values are transferred to the commercial part – advertisers, where large commercial conglomerates are. They found these traffics as segments of the market, and the social networking websites created a new way for them to access those markets. Finally the value becomes the money that pays to the websites, where the creators eventually received their payback.
The value chain does not create any form of tension, but rather, a very well-structured relationship. The problem within commercialisation are not caused by the value chain, but rather, the over flow of the value.
The over flow of the value is caused by the attraction of the social networking sites. since those social networking site are too good to be true, both users and business need it, not only wants.
It is significant that without any technological support for communications, people would found very difficult to keep networking ties with a lots of people. Internet removed the geographic barriers of networking ties, as Castells mentioned “The Internet is effective in maintaining weak ties, which other wise could be lost in the trade-off between the effort to engage in physical interaction, including telephone interaction and the value of the communication” (Castells Manuel 2001, p129).
Social networking sites keep those weak networking ties better than any IM applications. People not only can link to their offline contact on the sites, but also able to search last contacts, make new contact with people that went to the same school, company, and have the similar interest, or even randomly making new contact by browsing the sites. By having these contacts linked on the sites, these networks will be kept as long as the user still exits on the site.
Social networking sites also have a positive effect on social interaction, and it tends to increase exposure to other sources of information, Di Maggio etc, (2001) reported that Internet users attended more arts events read more literature went to more movies , wathed more sports and played more sports than non users (Castells Maneul the Internet Galaxy).
As more and more people adopted social networking sites, they become users from subscribers, become more depended on those sites. Those benefits and values that users could gain from social networking sites become a part of everyday life. As Donah Boyd discussed how the networking sites closely linked teenagers’ life, it is hard to say that generation X and Y could possibility live without it if they have used and reply on it for communication. Because it they do not use these sites anymore, it means they will lose all valuable networks, or even, the ability of communication.
[as] Public Personal Multi-Media - Enhanced information flow
Social networking sites are becoming a new form of media that broadcasts from the individual to the mass, which hand out all the power of the media to the users. These social networking sites, empower users to have their own media content and channels. To do so, they provide users means of creating media content such as general blog and forums, bulletins on MySpace, noticeboards etc.; selective media channels such as video, audio player, blogs as printing media, and connectivity with other people as well as access to other people’s networks. As Dewolfe, Chris (2007) described that these social networking sites are one-to-many mediums that like “the analog of public spaces like the mall and the neigborhood”.
By using such one-to-many public personal media participants are able to express who they are by personalise not only the content of the page but also the interactive presentations of the page such as video and pictures. Moreover, as apart of the websites’ community and organization, users are also able to locate themselves culturally by join different groups according to their interests, where egocentric networks replace groups (Danah Boyd). “In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame through which they can properly socialize with other participants” (Danah Boyd 2006), and also created a way to interact with people as well as provides useful information for their networks.
The public personal media then will form new web of networks through social networking sites’ connecting property, and generates new ways of information flow. The most significance of recent social networking sites’ development is the adoption of Web 2.0 technology. Unlike Web 1.0 where websites controls mass channels for information flow, Web 2.0 offers a board way of information flow which is almost the same as major websites for user generated content.
Take Myspace as an example. It offers a far more immediate and intuitive means of two-way communication than has ever existed which enabled significant information flows through users voluntary mediation and reporting. Danah Boyd also found that “the acts of information dissemination certainly raise possibilities concerning the political efficacy of social network sites”, which indicates that when content that shared on these sites are relevant to individuals, they consumer it and then share it (Danah Boyd 2001).
Therefore, “social networking sites have the potential to redemocratize politics, or even to commercialise products and brands across the world” (Danah Boyd 2001). As the director of MySpace Chris Dewolfe believed that these social networking are at its very best, and just begins the revolutions of social networking and information flow, and “this revolution will not be televised--it will be Webcast. It's already happening” (Chris Dewolfe 2007).
It could also predict that public personal media could be more powerful than traditional media. As today more and more people especially generation X and Y are turning off from the traditional platforms, they are moving towards to micro-media forms such as blogs and these social networking sites to obtain information. Therefore, business has to move towards social networking sites to be able to communicate with these people. Significantly, as more and more generation X and Y moves to the workforce, they become more profitable consumers. Hence to business, being able to contact with them means being able to sell to them in the future.
However, users data and content they created becomes the assets for social networking sites. For example, “the data collected by Myspace is a saleable asset. In August 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought Myspace’s parent company, Intermix Media, for $580 million” (Fred Scharmen 2006)
The tension between users and business are then intensified by the underground trading of data to the business. Moreover, as users’ content are publicly on the social networking sites, business are able to search for their targeted consumer and then link to them as a friend, which arise the question of being ethical.
Conclusion
To conclude, social networking sites are operating in a well-structured value chain. It creates value to users and business as networks of public personal media. Tensions are created by the over-flow of value on both side of the chain: users are becoming more and more depended on the sites as means of networking and communication; at the same time, business has to rely on it to communicate with hard-to-reach markets. There is no way to get way from this tension, and I would say that these tensions are just part of the dynamics of the online world, it comes and goes.
2. 
