Social network service

A social network and social network ( German: Community Network ) on the Internet is a loose connection of people in a network community. If it is networks, where users together to create your own content, this is referred to as social media. The world's largest social network with over one billion members, Facebook.

Terminology

Social networks represent a form of network communities ( online communities ) that are mapped technically web applications or portals. In English, the more precise concept of social network service (SNS ), German terms like " community portal " or " online contact network " there are hardly ever used. The most well known services in Germany are Facebook, Netlog, who - knows-who, Jappy, Twitter, XING, Google , MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, Pinterest and StudiVZ / meinVZ ( the associated network schülerVZ was in 2013 off).

Typical functions

The web portals usually offer their users to the following functions:

• Personal profile with various settings for visibility for members of the network community or among the public of the net.
• Contact list or address book, including features that allow the connections to the list here members of the network community (such as friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc.) can be managed (eg data import from e- mail account or other portals ).
• (Single, all, etc. ) receive and send messages to other members.
• Sending and receiving notifications about various events ( changes in profile, set pictures, videos, reviews, call waiting, etc.).
• Blogs or micro-blogging functions or publishing of individual status updates.
• Social Gaming is used for communication and co-operation of the platform users. The primary objective of these games is to build social contacts as well as the inclusion in the in-game communities.
• Search

There are functions that can be found in CSCW applications, but here for potentially large user groups ( global, national, regional, city -wide) designed.

Use

In spring 2008, the British took in Europe with 9.6 million users, social networks most. By 2012 there will be almost half of Britons according to an estimate of the information provider Datamonitor with over 27 million users. The fact that the British are so far forward, Datamonitor leads back to the fact that the offers are usually started with English versions. People appreciate According to Datamonitor, apparently particularly, socialize from home contacts and be able to maintain relationships.

France has sent 8.9 million was the second largest group of users of social networks, Germany followed accordingly with 8.6 million in third place. The study forecasts in Germany by 2012 21.7 million users. The Spain in the fourth place had only 2.9 million users. 41.7 million Europeans as a whole are registered with social networking sites in 2008, four years later, there should be 107 million, according to Datamonitor.

At a speech problem highlighting result, the second world created by the community operator Habbo study comes to brand loyalty of young people. The result: 40 percent of the approximately 60,000 young people surveyed from 31 countries do not see social networks as an important part of their online activities. Global Habbo Youth Survey According to the one of the main causes for this is that many of the communities are offered in English.

Also, LinkedIn and Facebook were struggling to break into the German market. Facebook was able to overcome these problems and has grown to be the largest social network in Germany 2009. LinkedIn has its main competitors XING in Germany.

Use by companies

Users may also be companies. These present themselves with a company profile. You will be advised by their own service providers (eg PR or advertising agencies ) and support or carry these activities ( eg in the context of corporate communication ) itself

Companies use the social networks among other things, to position itself as a brand compared to the (potential) employees ( employer branding ). At the same time, they often also serve the public relations or sales purposes ( social commerce ) and are therefore becoming more common part of marketing strategies. Making opportunities on company profiles in social networks attentive, are displaying ads or the integration of the respective URL in the traditional advertising media at the POS (eg QR codes ) or in corporate publications. To converse with other users frequently Community management is used. Take on a corporate profile negative comments and remarks on the part of users, we also speak of a shitstorm.

History

Already in the 80 years the foundations for social networks with the bulletin board systems (BBS ) was laid. These systems allowed even then the exchange of data and messages between multiple users on a single platform. In the late 80s and early 90s the applications CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL appeared, were the basic features that today make up a social network set: Unlike bulletin board systems, personal profiles were created, made ​​events publicized, chatting and public and private messages are sent.

Social networks whose functions go beyond the pure Internet forums and chat rooms, have existed since the mid-1990s. As preform mailbox networks as well as the Usenet can be considered that exist since the mid and late 1980s.

One of the first examples is the Founded in 1995, American school friends Classmates.com community. Founded in 1997, online community SixDegrees.com united according to a study by Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison as the first social network today's standard functions of searchable lists of friends, profiles and a message system on a website.

In 2003, LinkedIn was founded in July 2003, Myspace, in January 2004, followed Orkut. The business network XING (then OpenBC ) sat on it. In February 2004, Facebook was launched, initially only for students of Harvard University. Gradually the network for students from other U.S. universities, high school students and was eventually released for any user outside the United States.

In July 2005, Myspace was bought for 580 million U.S. dollars from the News Corporation. August 9, 2006 MySpace announced 100 million users, making Social Networks were known to a broad layer first.

In November 2005, the Student Directory StudiVZ was founded in Germany. In early 2007 StudiVZ was acquired by the publishing group Georg von Holtzbrinck, the purchase price was not disclosed. However, the Axel - Springer -Verlag failed recently with a bid of 120 million euros. Due to the success in the German speaking countries and the ever-increasing growth of non-students almost identical projects were started with a different target group and also raised platforms for Spain, Italy, France and Poland from the baptism with schülerVZ and meinVZ, which for lack of success now but were reinstated.

In October 2007, Google announced the OpenSocial initiative. This has made it possible to merge content from different social networks through a single method. Microsoft bought on 25 October 2007 accounted for 1.6 percent of Facebook and paid for 240 million U.S. dollars. Through this transaction, Facebook was worth on paper 15 billion U.S. dollars. Previously, a similar offer was rejected by Google and not take up an amount of one billion U.S. dollars, the Yahoo was willing to pay to take over Facebook.

In March 2008, AOL, the Internet subsidiary of the U.S. media group Time Warner, bought the social network Bebo, founded in 2005 for 850 million U.S. dollars (about 545 million euros). Bebo had at the time of adoption in his own words about 40 million users and is popular mainly in the UK.

In August 2008, Facebook announced 100 million users, 400 million users in February 2010, on 21 July 2010, half a billion users. In October 2012, a billion users have been reported by Facebook first.

In November 2010, the first alpha version of Diaspora, a distributed social network has been published.

On 28 June 2011, the Network Google Google Inc. launched as a direct competitor to Facebook. Recently Microsoft released in the spring of 2012, a social network called So.cl, however, this was designed only as a technology study and an application on Facebook presupposed. Since mid-2012 and Windows Live can be used for the login.

Social networks as an application platform

Some social networks also act as a platform for new program functions. Software developers can add to the portal pages to own program applications, that is, their user interfaces are embedded in the portal. The necessary programming interfaces and development environments are provided by the developers.

Examples are:

• Facebook social graph, a programming interface for Facebook
• MySpace Developer Platform (MDP ), a development environment for Myspace
• OpenSocial, an API that spans multiple social networks
• Google API programming interface to Google's social layer to retrieve public information and their integration into applications, apps, and websites
• Tumblr, blog network for sharing images, videos, etc.

Cross-platform is the Federation through B2B APIs to call.

Study of social networks

Among other things, explore business administration, anthropology, social psychology, communication studies, computational physics and game theory social networks. This multiplexity and network density play a role. The method developed here can also be used to webometrischen investigation of the Internet.

It turns out that social networks on their structure often form small-world networks, in which the maximum distance between individual units is surprisingly low ( " six degrees of separation ").

Business Model

Social networks are funded by member contributions as well as through various forms of advertising and sponsorship in corporate networks by offers for Recruiters ( XING, LinkedIn or BranchOut ). Since the willingness to pay of users usually is low, put most operators on advertising revenues. Networks, however, the fully renounce advertising, sponsorship and use of customer data ( such as My Network ), on the other hand could hardly establish so far.

Since the service providers have access to the social graph of the hosted network community, so know which member to which other members of communicating, they have a commercial interest information base, such as for addressable advertising.

Criticism

Criticism of the services depends primarily on:

• The publication of private information on the Internet, which may lead to personal disadvantages, either. Due to their own carelessness or safety gaps in service or user In the extreme case, the data for so-called cyber -bullying or identity theft can be used.
• The use of the social graph and other personal information from the service provider for commercial purposes.

These problems existed before the introduction of social networks, such as Microsoft and IBM have already been evaluated in 2003 newsgroups and mailing lists in social terms. Also always you could barter for disadvantages due to reckless publication on the internet herself. However, personal information have never been so detailed and categorized interrogated and released, as is common in the extensive user profiles of today's social networks of users. The automated analysis of this data has been simplified enormously and exacerbates the problems mentioned above.

Examples:

Looking at the social networks in their role as an application platform, as previously stood here the development of functionality in the foreground. Meanwhile, one begins to deal with security aspects of the applications there.

Furthermore, it is increasing discussion about lately, the impact of the use of social networks on the psyche of users. Research findings suggest that the use, in some users lead to a short-term increase of self-awareness and a reduction of self-control. Results of long-term studies, however, are not yet available to date.

In recent years, the number of those users has increased, the get out of social networking sites. What criticisms for these users are in the foreground, did a study at the University of Vienna in the year 2013 using the example of Facebook. The most frequently cited reason was worried about the privacy ( 48% ), followed by a general disapproval of the social network site ( 14%), negative experiences with friends on the social network site (13%) and the feeling addicted to the to be social network - side (6 %).

Privacy Legal Review

The collection, storage and disclosure of personal data always requires a legal basis ( see § 4 BDSG, for example, § 28 BDSG) or a consent under § 4a BDSG.

Consent pursuant to § 4a BDSG can only be granted after the effective data protection laws if it is based on the free choice of an informed user. The problem with social networks is but mainly in the fact that users have consented formal and mostly worry about the dangers and the networks have placed in a blind trust.

For a large data processing according to § 28 BDSG, the following applies: The data-protection rating and ranking is just beginning. Since the social networks and Internet communities are most likely to compare with clubs and is often spoken of members gradually Bergmann / Möhrle / Herb the legal relationship between a data subject and the relevant governing body as contract similar relationship of trust within the meaning of § 28 Section 1 Sentence 1 No.. 1 BDSG. According to the phase model of data processing should already be studied in the collection and storage, whether the data on the affected serve the quasi-contractual relationship of trust. Here, a strict standard to be applied to the question of necessity. Due to the earmarking a transmission is regularly problematic, because a network, which is used eg for recreational purposes must not be abused for professional purposes (search requests from employers for job applications ). Generally you will have to look at the use of search engines as not covered by the contract goal.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg decided in February 2012 that the operators of social networks can not be required to search the data of its users by filtering according to copyright infringement.

Reception

• In 2010, the life story of the inventor of Facebook filmed ( The Social Network ).

• The novel social network. The library of the fate of Chris M. Wagner is about the impact of social networks on the fate of individual people. The company fatec uses personal data from social networks like Facebook and Twitter and weaves cause and effect of individual events in a database to a large wattle. Thus, the influence on future events by skillful acting on the butterfly effect is possible.