Social networking

Draft

Definition

Social networking is the practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. (Whatis.com)

In educational technology, social networking refers to the professional or education/pedagogical use of social networking software.

One may distinguish two basic genres

• Social linking platforms that mostly just promote links between entries describing persons (profiles). A well known platform for professionals is LinkedIn.
• Social network sites: Platforms that let people create media-rich webpages and manage "friends" on the same platform and that can have various access to contents. The best known example is probably Facebook and pioneers were Frienster and MySpace. A variant of these are platforms to create networks, e.g Ning.

Social network sites

According to Danah Boyd, social network sites can be defined through three features: profiles, friends and comments.

Standards

• FOAF, a RDF standard for linking people (for which various applications exist)
• API standards to script platforms like Facebook and Ning (more details needed plus links to other web 2.0 standards)

Examples of social networking platforms

Examples of linking platforms

• frienster,
• Tribe
• LinkedIn, a friend-of-friend professional network.
• Orkut
• StudiVz - (StudiVZ Wikipedia) Social Networking platform for students.

Examples of platforms to promote exchange

• Ning social network platform. "Create Your Own Social Network for Anything". This is quite interesting, also more interested in web 2.0 standardization efforts than Facebook
• Think.com
• Facebook (not just homepages for the idle, it does have some interesting features and networks, including an API)
• youfig

Examples of mashups built on top

• unype is a [Location-aware computing|location-based] social application platform. It interfaces persons connected to various social software (facebook, Ning, twitter, etc.) via google earch in a chat. See the untype blog for details.

Links

• Social Networking in Schools Gets a Boost from NSBA

• Schoolboards: net danger over-rated; bring social networks to school

References

(missing)

• Boyd, Danah (2007). Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?, The Knowledge Tree, 2007.

• Churchill, E.F.; Halverson, C.A. (2005) Guest Editors' Introduction: Social Networks and Social Networking, IEEEExplore,9 (5). 14- 19 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MIC.2005.103.
  • See the full special edition of this this special issue.

• Lada Adamic, Eytan Adar, How to search a social network, Social NetworksVolume 27, Issue 3, , July 2005, Pages 187-203. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2005.01.007

• Liccardi, I., Ounnas, A., Pau, R., Massey, E., Kinnunen, P., Lewthwaite, S., Midy, M., and Sarkar, C. 2007. The role of social networks in students' learning experiences. SIGCSE Bull. 39, 4 (Dec. 2007), 224-237. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1345375.1345442

• Pei-Luen Patrick Rau, Qin Gao, Yinan Ding (in press), Relationship between the level of intimacy and lurking in online social network services, Computers in Human BehaviorIn Press, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.04.001.