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Social Networks

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Innovative Technologies in Everyday Life

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Computer Science ((BRIEFSCOMPUTER))

Abstract

Social networks are one of the greatest phenomena of the twenty-first century. In this chapter we examine social networking websites (and apps) and their users. After presenting essential statistics from recent studies, we focus on the most popular social networks (Facebook and Twitter) and discuss their history, jargon, usage, and impact. The chapter contains many practical recommendations for using a selected set of social networks most effectively and following the proper etiquette.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.google.com/search?q=social+network+definition.

  2. 2.

    According to a list at [10], there are at least 19…starting with the letter ‘F’. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia also maintains a list of (20, and growing) ‘defunct social networking sites’ [9].

  3. 3.

    http://www.linkedin.com/.

  4. 4.

    http://instagram.com/.

  5. 5.

    http://vine.co/.

  6. 6.

    http://www.swarmapp.com/.

  7. 7.

    http://pinterest.com/.

  8. 8.

    http://www.whatsapp.com/.

  9. 9.

    “This analysis of social media usage is based on a compilation of 27 surveys and about 47,000 interviews among adult internet users and about 62,000 interviews among all adults conducted by Pew Research Center from March 2005 to July 2015.” [13].

  10. 10.

    http://www.statista.com.

  11. 11.

    Surprisingly enough, the site—until then—mainly consisted of text and personal details about each user [5].Today, more than 350 million images are uploaded to Facebook each day [1].

  12. 12.

    As of the first quarter of 2016, approximately 894 million Facebook users accessed the social network exclusively via mobile device [2].

  13. 13.

    http://www.zynga.com/.

  14. 14.

    It is very hard to think of Facebook as we know it today without the iconic Like feature.

  15. 15.

    http://myspace.com/.

  16. 16.

    http://www.facebook.com/paper/.

  17. 17.

    You are invited to check my professional page at http://www.facebook.com/ProfessorOgeMarques, if you are interested.

  18. 18.

    The algorithm can be tweaked by ‘boosting’ or ‘promoting’ posts, two options that earn additional revenues for Facebook.

  19. 19.

    http://www.flickr.com/.

  20. 20.

    http://photos.google.com/.

  21. 21.

    http://www.smugmug.com/.

  22. 22.

    http://imgur.com/.

  23. 23.

    http://500px.com/.

  24. 24.

    http://www.dropbox.com/.

  25. 25.

    http://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos.

  26. 26.

    See official instructions for properly deleting your Facebook account at https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674.

  27. 27.

    You might also enjoy taking the etiquette quiz at http://goo.gl/LZvyXB.

  28. 28.

    In an amusing example of how social networks interact with one another, the fifth most popular Twitter account is the official YouTube account (@YouTube), with 61.3 million followers [21]. Incidentally, the Twitter YouTube channel has only 86,000 subscribers.

  29. 29.

    https://www.periscope.tv/.

  30. 30.

    There are many guidelines on how to write effectively in 140 characters or less on the Web, such as [7].

  31. 31.

    For individual users with a few hundred friends or followers, this can be done “manually” by looking at which posts received more feedback, for example. For social media accounts with larger number of followers—companies, celebrities, politicians—there are many analytics tools to measure one’s impact (for example, Klout [8]) and/or assist in such tasks.

  32. 32.

    Knowing how to use strategic hashtags will also help tremendously in attracting followers that might not know you otherwise.

References

  1. Facebook 350 million photos each day - business insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-350-million-photos-each-day-2013-9. Accessed 24 June 2016

  2. Facebook: mobile-only users 2016 — statistic. http://www.statista.com/statistics/281600/number-of-mobile-only-facebook-users/. Accessed 25 June 2016

  3. Global social media ranking 2016 — statistic. http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. Accessed 25 June 2016

  4. Global social media ranking 2016 — statistic. http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. Accessed 29 June 2016

  5. History of Facebook: all the major updates and changes from 2004–2016 — Know your mobile. http://www.knowyourmobile.com/apps/facebook/21807/history-facebook-all-major-updates-changes-2004-2016. Accessed 25 June 2016

  6. History of Facebook on a timeline. http://www.startlin.es/timelines/facebook/. Accessed 25 June 2016

  7. How to write in 140 characters or less. http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/how-to-write-in-140-characters-or-less.html. Accessed 29 June 2016

  8. Klout — Be known for what you love. https://klout.com/home. Accessed 27 June 2016

  9. List of defunct social networking websites - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_networking_websites. Accessed 25 June 2016

  10. List of social networking websites - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites. Accessed 25 June 2016

  11. Milestones — About. https://about.twitter.com/company/press/milestones. Accessed 29 June 2016

  12. Number of worldwide social network users 2010–2019 — statistic. http://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/. Accessed 25 June 2016

  13. Pew Research Center (2015) Social media usage: 2005–2015. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/

  14. Social media and events - statistics and facts — Statista. http://www.statista.com/topics/2040/social-media-and-events/. Accessed 29 June 2016

  15. Social networks - statistics and facts — statista. http://www.statista.com/topics/1164/social-networks/. Accessed 25 June 2016

  16. Taigman Y, Yang M, Ranzato M, Wolf L (2014) Deepface: closing the gap to human-level performance in face verification. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, pp 1701–1708

    Google Scholar 

  17. The twitter glossary — Twitter help center. https://support.twitter.com/articles/166337. Accessed 29 June 2016

  18. Timeline: key dates in Facebook’s 10-year history - Washington times. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/4/timeline-key-dates-in-facebooks-10-year-history/. Accessed 25 June 2016

  19. Timeline of twitter’s history - The Washington post. https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/business/timeline-of-twitters-history/570/. Accessed 29 June 2016

  20. Twitter - statistics and facts — Statista. http://www.statista.com/topics/737/twitter/. Accessed 27 June 2016

  21. Twitter: most-followed accounts worldwide 2016 — Statistic. http://www.statista.com/statistics/273172/twitter-accounts-with-the-most-followers-worldwide/. Accessed 29 June 2016

  22. Urban dictionary: vaguebooking. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Vaguebooking. Accessed 29 June 2016

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  1. Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

    Oge Marques

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Marques, O. (2016). Social Networks. In: Innovative Technologies in Everyday Life. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45699-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45699-7_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45697-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45699-7

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