A Web-Wide Social Network: and how to stick it to the man!

Every time I log onto Facebook or MySpace, I just presume my information is being used for third-party purposes. Call me cynical, but I just understand that it’s like that quote from Eben Moglen:

"Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared; get used to it" (Saunders, 2008).

Today however, I had a sudden urge to see what my rights were and who my details were going to (I blame my recent run in with the Wilderness Society, their tirade on my rights as a citizen, and my subsequent $15 a month donations).

During my search, I uncovered a piece of news which sparked some particular personal interest. Three announcements by MySpace, Facebook and Google, all within a week of each other, indicated the same trend; the future of online social networking doesn't live within a single entity's boundaries but instead permeates the web (Klaassen, 2008). According to the companies involved, the moves are unrelated, but they all suggest what I and I believe many other web watchers have been expecting; that social media services will spread broadly throughout the web, rather than stay contained within a single service.

…so what’s happening?

MySpace
MySpace's moves will make user profile data more portable, and allow users to link their MySpace profiles to their profiles on other services, such as Twitter. Updates to a MySpace profile would then be automatically reflected on linked profiles elsewhere on the web (Klaassen, 2008).

Facebook
Facebook's move appears to be developer-friendly. With the new service, a Facebook user, for example, can easily see on Digg which stories his or her Facebook friends voted up (Klaassen, 2008).

FriendConnect
Google's FriendConnect is more of a strategy to add social media enabling widgets to sites. Site owners can add many social tools to their sites. They will also be able to add applications built using the OpenSocial platform. Users can import friends and interact via those applications with friends from other social networks, such as Facebook. The idea is that any site can become an open social container (Klaassen, 2008).

While these moves presented numerous media and communication theory implications, I stopped to consider a marketing perspective. Could, why people participate in online communities, present some untrue data to the third-parties seeking to capitalise on these social network services? Shenton and McNeeley (in Flew, 2005) observed the reasons why people participate in online communities, which included the ability to play with personas. In these online social networking sites, people often have a set of people they know differently associated with each site e.g. work friends to Facebook, school friends to MySpace etc. In a study conducted, it was found that people altered their personality from slightly different to very different across these sites in accordance with their different social circles (Anderson, 2006).

Could this, then, present incorrect personal information and therefore erroneous data to the third-parties? Furthermore, with the advent of these social media services spreading more broadly throughout the web, possibly elevating their status to a more commonly used medium and therefore holding a wealth of consumer information, could marketers come to more heavily rely on the false data?

Upon reflection, I concede my different social network accounts are at least slightly different each time. While I was not comforted by the possible evidence of schizophrenia, I was comforted by the fact that I could have my democratic right to 'stick it to the man' in the form of false data.


Stayin' Sane,
a*ms

Reference List (including links)

Anderson, C. (2006). People Power: Blogs, user reviews, photo-sharing – the peer production era has arrived. Retrieved April 9, 2008, from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/people.html

Digg.com. (2008). Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://digg.com/

Facebook.com (2008). Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://www.facebook.com/ home.php

Flew, T. (2005). New media : an introduction. Melbourne: OUP.

Google. (2008). Open Social. Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

Klaassen, A. (2008). Coming Soon: A Web-Wide Social Network? Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=127012

MySpace.com. (2008). Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://www.myspace.com/

Perez, J.C. (2008). Google Steps Into Data Portability Dance With Friend Connect. Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://www.pcworld.com/article/ id,145765-c,google/article.html

Saunders, B. (2008). KCB201 Online Communities: Week 6 Lecture. Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp ?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_29175_1

Twitter.com. (2008). Retrieved May 2, 2008, from http://twitter.com/