Social Network Sites

I am going to focus on social network sites as a case study, because they are still the most massive and relevant case study we can work with. (This might be changing soon with mobile but we're not there yet.)

First, you'll notice that I'm saying "social network site" instead of "social networking site." This is intention. While you might be off using Facebook and MySpace to network with business colleagues, high school mates, and the hotty that you think you might want to date, most teens are not. They're focused on their friends. They use these sites to connect to people that they already know from school, church, activities, summer camp, etc.

One of the most problematic mistakes adults make when trying to make sense of social network sites is to presume that kids interact on these sites just like they do. This ain't true. Teens are using this space as a social hangout with their pre-existing network.

There are four features of social network sites that are relevant for us here today:

1. Profiles. Social network site profiles are where youth write themselves into being. Think of the profile as a digital body. Up until this point, you are an IP address and an IP address can't be dolled up for show and tell. With a profile, a teen can express who they are. Keep in mind the audience. This is about showing off to known individuals. Thus, when teens saying that they're 95 and from Christmas Island, they know they're not and their friends know they're not. They don't care about data accuracy for the system - they care that their friends get a sense of who they are. Profile decoration is akin to decorating one's bedroom wall or locker (back before that was a fire hazard). It's all about self-expression for friends.

2. Friends. Social network site Friends are not the same as your closest and dearest. There are all sorts of reasons to list others as Friends, not the least of which is because it's socially rude not to. Don't assume that when people indicate that they are connected on this system that they like each other. One way of thinking about Friends is as intended audience. This is who teens think that they are hanging out with. Of course, this is also Ground Zero for psychodrama - there's nothing fun about having to answer the question "Are you my Friend, Yes or No?" from someone you know but don't care for.

3. Comments. Most adults look at the comments on teens' profiles or Wall and get all uppity. Sure, the conversation typically boils down to "Yo, wazzup?" "Not much.. you?" "Nothing... I'm bored." "Me too." But be honest with yourself - those conversations that you just had in the hallway about the weather... were they so much more meaningful? I don't think so. All of this is a process of social grooming. It's a way of acknowledging one another and connecting while also letting everyone in the room know that you're not a pariah. I mean, imagine if we all went into the hallway and stood by ourselves and didn't make small chat. Wouldn't we all feel really awkward? Right. So think of these Comments in that regard. Teens know how to have deeper conversations - this just isn't where those necessarily happen.

4. New Feed. When Facebook launched the News Feed (and MySpace copied it), microblogging emerged on social network sites. These "status updates" provide a reverse chronological stream of the state of being of one's network. Many of these are mundane notes, details about food, comments on life, the universe and everything.

Most of you are familiar with this kind of structure through Twitter. Many of you have already send a bazillion Tweets today - we've all been watching them. But before you go thinking that you're down with the kids, let's get one thing straight: according to Pew, the median age of the Twitterverse is 31. That's right: this ain't kids' world.

Take a moment.. Do not assume that youth will adopt every new form of social media. In fact, they won't. There are very good reasons for why they don't use Twitter, not the least of which has to do with the fact that their parents think it's cool. Of course, Ashton Kutcher might change this. But for the most part, teens aren't here and aren't humored with being this public.

So why are they here? What are they doing here? The first thing to understand is that there's social pressure to be where your friends are. This ain't new. It's about the mall, about the school dance, etc. You don't exist if you're not where your friends are.

Of course, just because teens want to gather with their friends doesn't mean that social network sites are the ideal place. Often, being offline together with friends is much more preferred.
danah: If you could choose between hanging out with friends or being online with them?

But they still have good reasons for getting together online with friends, not the least of which is because they aren't allowed out. Teens often turn to them because they don't have other spaces in which they can gather with peers.

Of course, at the end of the day, social network sites are a great hang-out place, a great place to coordinate, and a great place to share. In fact, there's a lot about the way in which youth interact here that signals that it's just like any other public space. Now here's where we need to think about structure. How are these environments similar or different to other public spaces?

Learning about Social Networks

First, I want to make it VERY clear that sociality has learning implications. Youth engage with others to work out boundaries, to understand norms. This is how they learn power and authority, how they learn the networked architecture of everyday life. It's easy to eschew this, to argue that this is irrelevant, but most people spend a decent amount of their time working through social issues as a part of being an adult in this society. We talk about it as "politics" usually but it's about people. And teen years are where this is worked out.

It's also important to note the ways in which we need to learn to learn. Social media is connecting educators and learners in new ways and this too is extremely important. Consider, for example, this quote where a teacher helps a student in the off-hours on her MySpace:
"Pleeeeeeeeeeease tell me why pre-calculus is important to me..."
Mr. C: "... You're not learning this stuff because you need it every day as an adult... The reason is that studying these things (precalculus, Shakespeare, ... whatever) helps you get good at learning how to learn. And that, you will definitely have to do for the rest of your life. That's practically all we do as adults..."

Of course, that doesn't address where and when technology is useful in the classroom. We all know that technology can be useful in education purposes. Many of you are deeply invested in bringing technology to the classroom. I'm speaking to the choir on this one.

But I want to make one thing clear... Just because youth are using social media doesn't mean that it can fit well into the classroom. It needs to be thought through pedagogically and y'all need to understand how it's being used in everyday life before bringing it into the classroom.


Since we're using social network sites as a case study, let me point out one of the places where they FAIL miserably. On social network sites, you have to publicly list your Friends and you have to have the functioning network to leverage it. What happens if you're an outcast at school? Does bringing it into the classroom make it worse? What happens if you're forced to Friend someone who torments you because you share a class? And then you have to face that person in your "private" space online as well? Bringing social network sites into the classroom can be very very tricky because you have to contend with social factors that you, as a teacher, may not be aware of.

While I'm hesitant to introduce many forms of social media into the classroom directly, I think that it is critical to see how they are reshaping information flow. This is actually where tremendous innovation opportunities emerge.

We all know that youth are searching for information in totally new ways so I'm going to skip over that. But they are also sharing differently. Sharing of information is very different in a world of bits where it's easy to make a duplicate and still retain what you originally had. Pointers have value and sharing information can create memes. Needless to say, youth are leveraging social media to share with their friends and peers. Now, most of what they share might be pure gossip, but teens also share links, references, ideas, and original content.

Of course, while adults are increasingly using sophisticated tools to aggregate and disseminate information, youth are predominantly not. Teens are not familiar with RSS feed readers or aggregators like Del.icio.us. Again, just because you use these forms of social media doesn't mean youth do. For the most part, teens are primarily sharing through IM and their SNS of choice. Or simply by word of mouth.

In the same vain, most teens live and breathe open systems like Wikipedia but have no idea how these systems work. They are typically told that Wikipedia is bad rather than being taught how to make sense of the information that is there.

Many of them are producing their own content without a critical understanding of remix or user-generated content. They're experiencing the blurring between consumption and production but they don't have a framework to make sense of this or to understand how to respond to attacks on their practices.


For all of the attention paid to "digital natives" it's important to realize that most teens are engaging with social media without any deep understanding of the underlying dynamics or structure. Just because they understand how to use the technology doesn't mean that they understand the information ecology that surrounds it. Most teens don't have the scaffolding for thinking about their information practices.

It's critical to realize that just because young folks pick up a technology before you do doesn't inherently mean that they understand it better than you do. Or that they have a way of putting it into context. What they're doing is not inherently more sophisticated – it's simply different. They're coming of age in a culture where these structures are just a given. They take them for granted. And they repurpose them to meet their needs. But they don't necessarily think about them.

Educators have a critical role when it comes to helping youth navigate social media. You can help them understand how to make sense of what they're seeing. We can call this "media literacy" or "digital literacy" or simply learning to live in a modern society. Youth need to know more than just how to use the tools - they need to understand the structures around them.


You need to understand what they're doing and why. Most importantly, you need to not reject what they're doing or fetishize it.


The modern world is certainly filled with neat new gadgets. Today's youth are certainly embracing many of them. Yet, at the end of the day, what they are doing is a lot like what previous generations were doing, inflected by the dynamics and features of the technology. So how do we face the next generation living and learning with social media?

We start by opening up a dialogue. We start talking to youth about what they are doing and why they are doing it. We ask them to teach us about the technology while we guide them with the knowledge that we have through experience. We start co-operating and engaging with the shifting nature of everyday life.

At the end of the day, the biggest disruption brought on by technology has nothing to do with the youth themselves, but with the way in which it forces us to reconsider our position of power as adults. We cannot simply tell it like it is; we need to re-learn how to learn and how to evolve with the changes all around us.

Facebook losing control against Google

Google Inc will begin allowing users to personally endorse search results and Web pages, its latest attempt to stave off rival Facebook Inc while trying to jump onboard a social networking boom.
The so-called “+1″ button will start to appear alongside Google search results for select users, letting people recommend specific search results to friends and contacts by clicking on that button.
Eventually, the feature may begin to influence the ranking of search results, though that is only under consideration. Results are now ranked via a closely guarded algorithm.
The world’s leader in Internet search is battling to maintain its share of Web surfers’ time and attention, which is increasingly getting taken up by Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. But it has struggled to find its footing in the nascent market.
Its last attempt to create a social network – Buzz — has not fared well. A flood of complaints about how Buzz handled user privacy cast a pall over the product. Google announced it had reached a settlement with regulators under which it agreed to independent privacy audits every two years.

With the new +1 buttons, Google aims to counter one of Facebook’s most popular features. The new feature comes nearly a year after Facebook began offering special “Like” buttons to websites, creating a personalized recommendation system that some analysts believe could challenge the traditional ranking algorithms that search engines use to find online information.
Maintaining its role as the main gateway to information on the Internet, is key for Google, it generated roughly $29 billion in revenue last year — primarily from search ads.
While Google remains the Internet search and advertising leader, Facebook is taking a larger and larger portion of advertising dollars. Google said that +1 recommendation will also appear in the paid ads that Google displays alongside its search results.
In its internal tests, Google found that including the recommendations boosted the rates at which people click on the ads. Eventually, Google plans to let third-party websites feature +1 buttons directly on the pages of the third party.
Google’s Matt Cutts, a principal engineer for search, said the +1 buttons were part of the evolution of Google’s own social search efforts, rather than a direct response to Facebook’s Like buttons.
Currently Google is not using +1 recommendation as a factor in how it ranks search results — a user only sees that a friend recommended a search result if the result would have turned up in a search based on Google’s existing ranking criteria. The company is evaluating whether to use +1 recommendation as a ranking factor in the future. 

Basic's of Facebook

So, you are new to social networking. If this is the case, then you will no doubt be wondering how on earth you operate the social networking maze that is Facebook.
Fortunately, this site is actually really easy to navigate and utilize once you are made aware of the basic functions that this site has to offer.
The good thing about Facebook is that it allows you to keep in contact with all of the people in your life on a day to day basis. Let’s take a look at some of the most basic functions.
First, you are going to want to learn about your wall. Every Facebook user has a wall built into their profile. This wall is used for your friends to comment on, your status updates, and links and images that have been sent to you.
As well as this, any pictures that you have been tagged in will be displayed on your wall. Your wall is essentially the focal point of your profile, which is why it is important that you understand what it is and what it does. So, now we have gotten that out of the way, what’s next?
Your news feed. The feed is probably the most important thing about Facebook. Your news feed is where your friends status updates and activity on the site is displayed. For example, if one of your friends has updated their status then it will be displayed on your news feed which is on your home page.
It will also show when your friends write on other people’s walls, comment on pictures or links, or add new pictures and videos. This is the page that you will see first when you log into Facebook. By switching between top news and most recent you will be able to see different information.
The next thing that you need to know about is the ‘like’ function. So, imagine one of your friends has updated their status to something that you find funny. Instead of telling them, you can click the ‘like’ button which is displayed under their status. This will then be displayed. If you like a band, then you can like them on the site.
If you like a saying or a quote then you will also be able to click the ‘like’ button. The same principal can be used for pictures or videos.
These are the three basic functions that you should definitely know about before you sign up to Facebook.
As you can see, the basic functions really are quite simple to understand, and very simple to use.
These will help you on your way to connecting with the people in your life and making the most out of the technology on offer today. As long as you know these things, the rest is fairly easy to figure out once you become a regular Facebook user. It will all click into place on its own and you will see how great this site can be if you know how to use it. 

Social Media Learning

First, I want to make it VERY clear that sociality has learning implications. Youth engage with others to work out boundaries, to understand norms. This is how they learn power and authority, how they learn the networked architecture of everyday life. It's easy to eschew this, to argue that this is irrelevant, but most people spend a decent amount of their time working through social issues as a part of being an adult in this society. We talk about it as "politics" usually but it's about people. And teen years are where this is worked out.

It's also important to note the ways in which we need to learn to learn. Social media is connecting educators and learners in new ways and this too is extremely important. Consider, for example, this quote where a teacher helps a student in the off-hours on her MySpace:

Of course, that doesn't address where and when technology is useful in the classroom. We all know that technology can be useful in education purposes. Many of you are deeply invested in bringing technology to the classroom. I'm speaking to the choir on this one.

But I want to make one thing clear... Just because youth are using social media doesn't mean that it can fit well into the classroom. It needs to be thought through pedagogically and y'all need to understand how it's being used in everyday life before bringing it into the classroom.

Since we're using social network sites as a case study, let me point out one of the places where they FAIL miserably. On social network sites, you have to publicly list your Friends and you have to have the functioning network to leverage it. What happens if you're an outcast at school? Does bringing it into the classroom make it worse? What happens if you're forced to Friend someone who torments you because you share a class? And then you have to face that person in your "private" space online as well? Bringing social network sites into the classroom can be very very tricky because you have to contend with social factors that you, as a teacher, may not be aware of.

While I'm hesitant to introduce many forms of social media into the classroom directly, I think that it is critical to see how they are reshaping information flow. This is actually where tremendous innovation opportunities emerge.

We all know that youth are searching for information in totally new ways so I'm going to skip over that. But they are also sharing differently. Sharing of information is very different in a world of bits where it's easy to make a duplicate and still retain what you originally had. Pointers have value and sharing information can create memes. Needless to say, youth are leveraging social media to share with their friends and peers. Now, most of what they share might be pure gossip, but teens also share links, references, ideas, and original content.

Of course, while adults are increasingly using sophisticated tools to aggregate and disseminate information, youth are predominantly not. Teens are not familiar with RSS feed readers or aggregators like Del.icio.us. Again, just because you use these forms of social media doesn't mean youth do. For the most part, teens are primarily sharing through IM and their SNS of choice. Or simply by word of mouth.

In the same vain, most teens live and breathe open systems like Wikipedia but have no idea how these systems work. They are typically told that Wikipedia is bad rather than being taught how to make sense of the information that is there.

Many of them are producing their own content without a critical understanding of remix or user-generated content. They're experiencing the blurring between consumption and production but they don't have a framework to make sense of this or to understand how to respond to attacks on their practices.

For all of the attention paid to "digital natives" it's important to realize that most teens are engaging with social media without any deep understanding of the underlying dynamics or structure. Just because they understand how to use the technology doesn't mean that they understand the information ecology that surrounds it. Most teens don't have the scaffolding for thinking about their information practices.

It's critical to realize that just because young folks pick up a technology before you do doesn't inherently mean that they understand it better than you do. Or that they have a way of putting it into context. What they're doing is not inherently more sophisticated – it's simply different. They're coming of age in a culture where these structures are just a given. They take them for granted. And they repurpose them to meet their needs. But they don't necessarily think about them.

Educators have a critical role when it comes to helping youth navigate social media. You can help them understand how to make sense of what they're seeing. We can call this "media literacy" or "digital literacy" or simply learning to live in a modern society. Youth need to know more than just how to use the tools - they need to understand the structures around them.

You need to understand what they're doing and why. Most importantly, you need to not reject what they're doing or fetishize it.

The modern world is certainly filled with neat new gadgets. Today's youth are certainly embracing many of them. Yet, at the end of the day, what they are doing is a lot like what previous generations were doing, inflected by the dynamics and features of the technology. So how do we face the next generation living and learning with social media?

We start by opening up a dialogue. We start talking to youth about what they are doing and why they are doing it. We ask them to teach us about the technology while we guide them with the knowledge that we have through experience. We start co-operating and engaging with the shifting nature of everyday life.

At the end of the day, the biggest disruption brought on by technology has nothing to do with the youth themselves, but with the way in which it forces us to reconsider our position of power as adults. We cannot simply tell it like it is; we need to re-learn how to learn and how to evolve with the changes all around us.