How Do Social Networks "Work"?

The success of the social network site can be attributed to the fact that they appeal to two of the most basic human desires: the desire for attention, and the desire to poke out nose in everyone else's business. We all want to feel like other people care what we're doing, where we've been; at the end of the day we really haven't got past the hospital nursery where we all once tried to cry the loudest, vying for attention. Even more so than that, we all love knowing more than we have to about other people. It's the only explanation for why we care who a golfer we've never met sleeps with.

The basic structure of any web based social network is simple. They're a means of bringing people together; an interactive social experience. They make contact with friends, family, or people you've never met but feel like talking to anyway quicker and easier. Of course, although the social network-er has the ability to connect with millions, they typically keep in contact with a small fraction of they people they "friend" or "follow", as most inevitably find there aren't enough hours in a day to keep up with everyone[1].

Of the hundreds of social networking sites that exist around the world, Facebook is easily the largest, being the second most frequented website, behind only Google[2]. It has become the standard by which any other social networking site is judged. Therefore delving into the reasons why Facebook is successful is revealing for why social networking sites in general are successful.

Facebook is creepy. If someone said 10 years ago that people would go on to display your hometown, current location, school, work, family and hundreds of photos of themselves to anyone with a computer, they'd sound like a nut-job who's taking the whole Patriot Act scare thing to seriously, and that such an Orwellian concept was ridiculous. Sometimes Facebook's patrons attempt to "rise up" against the arbitrary changes the site makes, usually making it more open and allowing for less privacy, but these never amount to much. No one's ever actually going to delete their Facebook account, much in the same almost no one actually moves to Canada when Bush wins an election. It's almost laughable thinking about the "News Feed" controversy a few years ago, where millions of people protested the news feed's creation, yet nothing happened and the news feed is second nature today[3]. Facebook continues to push the envelope of how much people willing to share with the world, and it's no coincidence that the more the site's administrators do so, the more successful the website becomes. Never content to rest on their laurels when sharing it's patron's personal information, Facebook recently introduced the ability to see all the interactions two of your "friends" have ever had on the website ever[4].

Social networking sites, for the most part, are free. They're also a gold mine, Facebook having made Mark Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire on the planet [5]. They can do this because of advertising. Social networking sites are no-brainers for advertisers. They bring together people with common interests, and display an individuals interests publicly [1].

More than just exploiting your personal information of advertising dough, social networking sites can be dangerous in that they can easily get you in trouble. There have been a few noteworthy cases of this happening. Most happen in places where civil liberties were already pretty suppressed, such as China. However even in the US, things people post to Facebook and other social networking sites are causing them grief. Take the example of the Student Assembly rep who was relieved of her seat after pictures of her consuming alcohol under the legal age were posted on Facebook, or the teen who was arrested for graffiti after his moniker was traced to his MySpace [6].

So how do social networks "work"? Besides the logistical explanation of photo albums and statuses and friends and pokes, they work (as in they're successful) because they appeal to people on a level which little else in the world can. They make people think others care about their personal lives, and let people snoop through the personal lives of others. So even though they're shameless capitalist advertisement tools, and can get you in plenty of trouble, they're still frequented and popular, and probably will be until the next big technological innovation comes along.

[1] Huberman, Bernardo A./Romero, Daniel M./Wu, Fang. "Social Networks That Matter: Twitter Under the Microscope." 2008. Web. January 19th, 2011. p.2

[2] Alexa Top 500 Sites. Alexa : The Web Information Company. January 1st, 2011. <http://www.alexa.com/topsites>. January 19th, 2011. Web.

[3] Westlake, E.J. "Facebook: Friend Me If You Facebook. Generation Y and Performative Surveillance." Web. January 19th, 2011. p.22

[4] Van Grove, Jennifer. Facebook Now Tries to Tell the Story Between Two Friends. Mashable. October 28th, 2010. <http://mashable.com/2010/10/28/facebook-friendship-pages/>. January 19th, 2011.

[5] O'Malley-Greenburg, Zach. In Pictures: Youngest Billionaires: Mark Zuckerberg. Forbes. March 5th, 2008. <http://www.forbes.com/2008/03/05/richest-people-billionaires-billionaires08-cx_lk_0305billie_land.html>. January 19th, 2011.

[6] Snyder, Carpenter, and Slauson (2007). Myspace.com: A Social Networking Site and Social Contract Theory. Information Systems Education Journal, 5. p.7