Net204: Internet Communities and Social Networks - Stage 2: Social Networks

Stage 2 is about preparing for the 2000-2500 word paper for the Online Conference. There are 4 streams:

1. Communities and Web 2.0
2. Social Networks
3. Identity in Communities and Networks
4. Communities and Online Gaming

Social Networks

Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship

This paper discusses the history of social networking sites, what attracted users to them, and what made them succeed or fail. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality based identities. Tools of communication vary among social networking sites, i.e. mobile connectivity, blogging and photo/video sharing.

We define social networking sites as web-based services that allow individuals to:

1. construct a public or semi public profile within a bounded system
2. articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection
3. view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system

Here is a brief history:

• 1997 - SixDegrees.com was the first recognisable social networking site and failed because it was considered ahead of it's time
• AIM and ICQ supported buddy lists
• Classmates.com connected school friends
• 1997 - 2001 - Friends, AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet and MiGente were considered dating sites
• 1999 - Live Journal and Cyworld
• 2000 - LunarStorm
• 2001 - Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn and Friendster. Friendster has been considered one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history. It lost members due to technical problems, server crashes and negative press coverage
• 2003 - MySpace became very popular because it connected bands with their fans and because they welcomed younger members. They were also the first to introduce html customisation into member profiles. Around this time blogging services with SNS features became popular like Xanga, LiveJournal and Vox
• 2004 - Facebook began as Harvard only, then all university students and eventually anyone could join

Reference

boyd, d., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1).

Web207: Topic 1.3: Music

Image courtesy of http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/wikileaks-napste/

Notes from this week's lecture and readings:

• Music has had to wrestle with digitalisation and convergence longer than other mediums because it can be compressed smaller than film and TV shows - so it is easier and faster to share than other formats
• Napster wasn't the first peer to peer site, but it was the first to get attention. This was because all users had to go through a central index which rang alarm bells with copyright holders
• P2P isn't a new concept – its been around since 1969 with UseNet, however now with computers being able to access high speed broadband and the capacity for larger memory – P2P is now easy for the average home user. P2P has become an increasingly useful model for internet-based collaboration and networking (Wikstrom, 2010)
• With the digitalisation of music - music has had to shift from a physical product (record/tape/CD) to a service (digital format/platform)
• Lily Allen was discovered on MySpace and Justin Bieber on YouTube
• In the analogue age, it was difficult to be discovered, but now with the digital age, all it takes is for your home-baked song or video to be uploaded to YouTube and the chances of being discovered are increased (Wikstrom, 2010)
• For years the record companies had been making billions of dollars, paying as little as possible to the artist and charging as much as possible for records/tapes/CD's and concert tickets – yet it's the listeners who get punished (fined for copyright infringement) when it should be the record companies who get punished (Kot, 2009)
• When the audience is actually creating the technology – the business has to adapt. But the industry had no intention of adapting – they were a profitable controlling industry which, with the invention of CD's, now had a new reason to sell music they had already sold on vinyl years earlier...for double the original price of a record or cassette. There was no reason to change because things were just too good. In 1999 the total revenue from music sales (albums and singles) was $14.6 billion (Kot, 2009).

Reflection:

Napster did offer record companies a billion dollar deal before they were shut down, however they were turned down. If they had agreed - would iTunes be around today? We may be buying and downloading songs/shows/films from Napster instead! Shawn Fanning could be one of the wealthiest men in the tech world instead of Steve Jobs.

References:

Kot, G. (2009). Napster vs. Metallica. In Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music (pp. 25-39). New York: Scribner. http://edocs.library.curtin.edu.au/eres_display.cgi?url=dc60267031.pdf&copyright=1 

Wikstrom, P. (2010). The Social and Creative Music Fan. In The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud (pp. 147-169). Polity