Alternative to Existing Social Web Media
Chapter One
Objectives of the study
This project research will be focused on building online communication of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. The objective of this research is:
- To access the growth pattern of social network technologies with relevant historical timelines alongside the critical examination of the history of social networks, growth, impacts and challenges.
- To analyze the various technologies and platforms available for social networking and examine the context and structure of social networking: focus on how the structure of ties affects individuals and their relationships;
- To identify issues, dangers, shortcomings and criticisms associated with social networking and outline the social good, impacts and benefits of social networks
- Discuss speculations and theories about present formations and future prospects;
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Concept of social networking
The idea of social networks has been studied by sociologists for decades as they analyze the ties between people in families, organizations and even in towns or countries. Despite this increase in the ability to stay connected, there has been debate about whether communication technology contributes to a withdrawal of people from their social environments by decreasing face-to-face social interactions.
Social network attracts many users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. As of this writing, there are hundreds of SNSs, with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices. While their key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge around SNSs are varied. Most sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social networks, but others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality-based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, and photo/video-sharing.
Social Network Analysis (SNA) may also be an effective tool for mass surveillance — for example the Total Information Awareness program was doing in-depth research on strategies to analyze social networks to determine whether or not Nigerian citizens were political threats. (Freeman, 2006).
A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes,” which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.
Early social networking websites started in the form of generalized online communities such as The WELL (1985), Theglobe.com (1994), Geocities (1994) and Tripod (1995). These early communities focused on bringing people together to interact with each other through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools which were a precursor to the blogging phenomenon. Some communities took a different approach by simply having people link to each other via email addresses. These sites included Classmates.com (1995), focusing on ties with former school mates, and SixDegrees.com (1997), focusing on indirect ties. User profiles could be created, messages sent to users held on a “friends list” and other members could be sought out who had similar interests to yours in their profiles.
Whilst these features had existed in some form before SixDegrees.com came about, this would be the first time these functions were available in one package. Despite these new developments (that would later catch on and become immensely popular), the website simply wasn’t profitable and eventually shut down. It was even described by the website’s owner as “simply ahead of its time.” Barry, Wenhong and Dong (2002).
One such model of social networking that came about in 1999 was trust-based, such as that developed by Epinions.com. Innovations included not only showing who “friends” with whom is, but giving users more control over content and connectivity. Between 2002 and 2004, three social networking sites emerged as the most popular form of these sites in the world, causing such sites to become part of mainstream users globally. First there was Friendster (which Google tried to acquire in 2003), then, MySpace, and finally, Bebo. By 2005, MySpace, emergent as the biggest of them all, was reportedly getting more page views than Google. 2004 saw the emergence of Facebook, a competitor, also rapidly growing in size. In 2006, Facebook opened up to the non US college community, and together with allowing externally-developed add-on applications, and some applications enabled the graphing of a user’s own social network – thus linking social networks and social networking, became the largest and fastest growing site in the world, not limited by particular geographical followings, (James and Nicholas, 2008).
Social networking began to flourish as a component of business internet strategy at around March 2005 when Yahoo launched Yahoo! 360°. In July 2005 News Corporation bought MySpace, followed by ITV (UK) buying Friends Reunited in December 2005. Various social networking sites have sprung up catering to different languages and countries. It is estimated that combined there are now over 200 social networking sites using these existing and emerging social networking models (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Twitter now has recently eclipsed many other social network services and although lacking in some of what were considered the essential aspects of a SNS.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS OF THE PROJECT
The focus of this chapter will be system design and the processes involved in the systematic approach for providing answers to posed research questions. However, emphasis shall be laid on methods/sources of data collection with an overview of the program platform used for development of the social networking system which is the exclusive aim of this project research.
A research is basically an enquiry into the unknown, which involves the search for solutions to problems or answers to questions. Research design is a plan that specifies how data relating to a given problem should be collected and analyzed. It provides the procedural outline for the conduct of any given investigation. Hence, the system design methodology, systems flowchart, execution modules and programming techniques applied in achieving a practicable social networking system shall be evaluated and analyzed.
Method of data collection
For the purpose of designing and developing the proposed system in this project research, data was collected through the primary and secondary sources.
Primary Source
Primary sources of data include consultation with developers and end-users by interviewing them for information on user experiences, development guidelines in existing Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and user-desired features in existing and future SNSs.
Secondary Source
Research materials such as textbooks, journals, literatures and internet resources were consulted in an attempt to gather related information for a more detailed literature review to aid in a successful design and implementation of the proposed social networking system.
CHAPTER FOUR
DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE SYSTEM
System design
System design states the functional requirements specifying which outputs should be produced from the given inputs. They describe the relationship between the input and output of the system, for each functional requirement a detailed description of all data inputs and their source and the range of valid inputs must be specified. All the operations to be performed on the input data to obtain the output should be specified.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Summary
This chapter attempts to conclude the research work; accordingly the chapter comprises of predilections, future perspective of social networking sites, conclusions made during the course of social networking sites’ (SNSs) study and analysis as well as recommendations.
Social networking sites have transformed the way people express themselves on the Internet and have become a door to the social life of many individuals. Users are contributing more and more content to these sites in order to express themselves as part of their profiles and to contribute to their social circles online. While this builds up the online identity for the user, it also leaves the data vulnerable to be misused, as an example, for targeted advertising and sale. More private data online has lead to growing privacy concerns for the users, and some have faced extreme repercussions for sharing their private information on these networking sites.
With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, web application development has become much more distributed with a growing number of users acting as developers and source of online content. Social networking websites have recently evolved from being service providers to platforms for running third party applications. Users have typically trusted the social networking sites with personal data, and assume that their privacy preferences are correctly enforced. However, they are now being asked to trust each third-party application they use in a similar manner. This has left the users’ private information vulnerable to accidental or malicious leaks by these applications.
Conclusion
As these technologies become more widespread, the boundaries of social networking continue to expand. Indeed, social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook have redefined the traditional definition of what it means to be someone’s friend. Social networking continues to fuel globalization through the interconnectedness’s that it creates. While online forums pose challenges for communicating, so do traditional methods of communication. The challenges posed by online social networking, and the potential benefits to informal and formal education, are still emerging. While social networking is not a new phenomenon, it is something that is slowly and newly starting to be embraced in the educational world. The technology that enables this new level of connection is a vehicle, one that has the potential to open up information to more people than has ever been possible at any point throughout human history.
Online social networks are both vaster and looser than their offline counterparts. It is possible for somebody’s profile to be connected to hundreds of peers directly, and thousands of others through the network’s ties. Many individuals in a person’s online extended network would hardly be defined as actual friends by that person; in fact many may be complete strangers. And yet, personal and often sensitive information is freely and publicly provided.
Recommendations
The following recommendations have been made for consideration in user perspective in potential gains of SNSs, future study and development of social networking and allied technologies.
To Users
- Create a profile that showcases your talents and interests. Treat your profile like a college application or job application.
- If you are an artist, graphic designer, photographer, or musician use the site to showcase your talent.
- Use a social networking site to coordinate the activities of a club or sports team. Include schedules and photos of games.
- Use social networking to engage other teens in your school or community to discuss and propose solutions on local issues of importance to teens.
- Find a way to use social networking for a social service project – in your own community or on the other side of the world. Does a local homeless shelter need clothes and toys for kids? Does an impoverished village in Africa need books and supplies for a school?
- Create a social network for your faculty and staff to allow for extended discussions that might not be possible in regular physical meetings.
REFERENCES
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