Social Networking Services

Social Networking Services (commonly abbreviated SNS) are services geared towards creating and promoting social interaction amongst the services' various users.

Social Network Users' Bill of Rights

1. Honesty: We will honor our privacy policy and terms of service.
2. Clarity: We will make sure that our policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand.
3. Freedom of speech: We will not delete or modify user data without a clear policy and justification.
4. Empowerment : We will support assistive technologies and universal accessibility.
5. Self-protection: We will support privacy-enhancing technologies.
6. Data minimization: We will minimize the information users are required to provide and share with others.
7. Control: We will work toward enabling users to own and control their data and won’t facilitate sharing their data unless they agree first.
8. Predictability: We will obtain the prior consent of users before significantly changing who can see their data.
9. Data portability: We will make it easy for users to obtain a copy of their data.
10. Protection: We will treat user data as securely as our own confidential data unless they choose to share these data, and notify them if these data are compromised.
11. Right to know: We will show users how we are using their data and allow them to see who and what has access to their data.
12. Right to self-define: We will allow users to create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. We will not link them without their permission.
13. Right to appeal: We will allow users to appeal punitive actions.
14. Right to withdraw: We will allow users to delete their accounts and remove their data.

Social Networking Problem

Social Networks are great tools, they allow you to keep in touch with friends and colleagues you may have otherwise forgotten about, or lost touch with. Thanks to SNS you can now track and interact with friends, family and colleagues regardless of physical location or time constraints.

The result of these interactions however, is the inherent problem. Social Networks generate an immense amount of data, alot of which gets lost, or buried in sever log files or databases forever. Some propose that mapping Social Networks and their corresponding interactions and generated data, is an extremely important and useful thing to do for the future of our society. This mapping could allow data to be reused for timeline recrations and complex decision-making or inference rather than stored in a "data silo" by a single company or provider.

(Lack of) Privacy

In addition, there are inherent and quite justified privacy concerns related to Social Networks and activities saved/accumulated as a result of their usage, particularly where a user's interaction with a service and/or friends, family and acquaintances via a service generate data that is publicly available by default, or, whose sharing is opt-out. Even in cases where an SNS site's terms are clear and where usage data is strictly regulated or kept private, there is the possibility that a person's complete profile data or a portion thereof could be shared with Advertisers or other 3rd party business partners of the Social Network. These and similar privacy concerns have raised many questions about the immensely popular Facebook SNS site for example.

Social Networks

North America

Canada

• Facebook: http://facebook.ca
• Plenty of Fish: http://www.plentyoffish.com/

USA

• MySpace: http://myspace.com
• Facebook: http://facebook.com

South America

• Hi5: http://badoo.com
• Badoo: http://badoo.com

Brazil

• Orkut: http://orkut.com.br

Europe

Ireland

• Pig's Back: http://pigsback.com

UK

• Bebo: http://bebo.com

France

• SkyRock: http://www.skyrock.com/

Spain

• Tuenti: http://www.tuenti.com
• Qdamos: http://qdamos.es

Italy

• Dada (love): http://love.dada.net

Holland

• Hyves: http://hyves.nl

Germany

• studivz: http://studivz.net

Russia

• Vkontakte: http://vkontakte.ru

Romania

• Hi5: http://hi5.ro

Poland

• Nasza-klasa: http://Nasza-klasa.pl

Turkey

• Yonja: http://yonja.com
• Orkut: http://orkut.com

Eastern Europe

• Badoo: http://badoo.com

Asia

Japan

• Mixi: http://mixi.jp

Korea

• Cyworld: http://cyworld.sk

China

• Qzone: http://qzone.cn

India

• Orkut: http://orkut.in

Thailand

• Hi5: http://hi5.th

Souteast Asia

• Friendster: http://friendster.com

Tools

• Agna - freeware application designed for social network analysis, sociometry and sequential analysis: http://www.geocities.com/imbenta/agna/
• A great free Social Network Analysis Tool: http://www.bioteams.com/2008/02/08/a_great_free.html
• Pipl - The most comprehensive people search on the web: http://www.pipl.com/

Elgg

• Elgg: http://elgg.org | ElggSpaces (leading Open Source Social Networking Platform)
• Sites powered by Elgg: http://docs.elgg.org/wiki/Sites_powered_by_Elgg

Diaspora

• Diaspora: http://www.joindiaspora.com/
• Diaspora "Pods": http://podupti.me/ (example sites running Diaspora)

Reddit

• Reddit: http://www.reddit.com
• What is a Reddit AMA? (Ask Me Anything): http://webtrends.about.com/od/Reddit-Web/a/What-Is-A-Reddit-Ama.htm
• Reddit API wrappers: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/API-Wrappers (Java, PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, C#, etc)

Parler

• Parler:

Resources

• Map Of Online Communities: 2010 vs. 2007 (INFOGRAPHIC): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/08/map-of-online-communities-2010_n_755545.html
• World Map Of Social Networks Shows Facebook’s Ever-Increasing Dominance (2010): http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/10/world-map-of-social-networks-shows-facebooks-ever-increasing-dominance/
• World Map of Social Networks (2009): http://www.vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks/
• A Map Of Social Network Dominance (2009): http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/07/a-map-of-social-network-dominance/
• Social network popularity around the world (2008): http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/08/12/social-network-popularity-around-the-world/
• A Sailor’s Map to Social Networks (2007): http://blog.adamnash.com/2007/05/03/a-sailors-map-to-social-networks/

External Links

• wikipedia: Social network service
• wikipedia: Mobile social network
• wikipedia: Virtual community
• wikipedia: List of virtual communities with more than 100 million users
• A Message in a Bottle - Social networking in its oldest form: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14859116
• WELL - the first Social Network (grandfather online community movement): http://www.well.com/aboutwell.html
• Taking social networks abroad - Why MySpace and Facebook are failing in Japan: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/03/taking-social-networks-abroad-why-myspace-and-facebook-are-failing-in-japan/
• SOCIAL NETWORKING GOD - 350+ Social Networking Sites: http://mashable.com/2007/10/23/social-networking-god/
• Modeling The True Value Of Social Networks: 2009 Edition: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/04/the-true-value-of-social-networks-the-2009-updated-model/
• Are Social Networks Sinking?: http://www.technologyreview.com/business/21791/?nlid=1573&a=f
• Thailand - Commercial and Social Mobile Applications: http://comm215.wetpaint.com/page/Thailand:+Commercial+and+Social+Mobile+Applications?t=anon
• Ma.gnolia Data is Gone For Good: http://www.twine.com/item/1217hxrvv-67g/ma-gnolia-data-is-gone-for-good-data-center-knowledge
• MAGNOLIA - A lesson to be learned from Magnolia's catastrophic crash: http://citizengarden.com/2009/02/15/episode-11-whither-magnolia/
• Social networks and cell phones new BFFs?: http://www.twine.com/item/1217jr525-btq/social-networks-and-cell-phones-new-bffs-wireless-msnbc-com
• Social networking sites such as Facebook could raise your risk of serious health problems by reducing levels of face-to-face contact, a doctor claims: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1149207/How-using-Facebook-raise-risk-cancer.html
• Unfortunately, database file recovery has been unsuccessful and I won't be able to recover members' bookmarks from the Ma.gnolia database. This means that the are the only source for recovering your bookmark collections: http://ma.gnolia.com/
• 15+ tools and visualizations for your social network: http://changemod.com/755/2008/01/20/15-tools-social-network/
• Relevant reading on turning "Social Networks" into "Consumer Networks": http://media6degrees.com/about/reading.html
• 10 Things to remember about SNS: http://i.techrepublic.com.com/downloads/dl_10_things_sn.pdf
• Ping.fm - another social spamming utility: http://matthom.com/archive/2008/06/18/ping-fm-another-social-spamming-utility
• FriendFeed adds to content overload: http://matthom.com/archive/2008/03/03/friendfeed-adds-to-content-overload
• Avoid using feeds as content: http://www.matthom.com/archive/2007/07/27/avoid-using-feeds-as-content
• Trying too hard to merge content: http://www.matthom.com/archive/2007/05/21/trying-too-hard-to-merge-content
• API connections and cross-network auto posting: http://matthom.com/archive/2008/05/08/api-connections-and-cross-network-auto-posting
• Facebook "Blog It" app cheapens content: http://www.matthom.com/archive/2008/04/17/facebook-blog-it-app-cheapens-content
• Businesses should embrace social media rather than try to contain it: http://matthom.com/archive/2009/08/02/businesses-should-embrace-social-media
• Social Networking Drives Top Trends on China's Web: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=789&doc_id=184612&
• Ning: Failures, Lessons and Six Alternatives: http://mashable.com/2010/04/18/ning-alternatives/#
• Social Networks/Blogs Now Account for One in Every Four and a Half Minutes Online: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/social-media-accounts-for-22-percent-of-time-online/
• Social Networks, Criminal Networks?: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/031910-social-networks-criminal.html
• Facebook and Bebo risk 'infantilising' the human mind: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
• Atlantis - Plato's Powerful Myth of Social Control: http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2013/10/atlantis-platos-powerful-myth-of-social.html
• 100 interesting questions to ask to get to know someone better: https://www.today.com/life/relationships/questions-to-ask-to-get-to-know-someone-rcna39326

See Also

IM | SMS | Email | Social Media | Social Bookmarking | Facebook | MySpace | Mixi