End-of-year snapshots, reviews, etc.
This thread is to collect and discuss the about the social networking world around the turn of the year. Sufficiently-interesting topics can be threads in their own right; collecting them here makes it a useful “state of the world” snapshot as well as reference list.
A few to start out with:
- Pew Internet’s Teens and Social Media; danah boyd’s got a nice summary. While not specifically focused on social networks, Pew’s Digital Footprints is also relevant: it reports that while 47% of internet users have checked to see what information is available about them online, 61% of adult users don’t take any steps to leave information about them online.
- Caroline McCarthy’s year-end review on CNet is a great quick summary and has excellent links to many of the top stories from the last year.
- Ari Melber’s About Facebook in The Nation (and the related threads TPM Cafe’s Table for One, including Facebook and the National Surveillance State and Facebook and the “New Privacy”) illustrate how questions of privacy and civil rights on social networks may be hitting the mainstream political scene.
- Michael Libermann’s Goodreads rising in the Seattle PI’s Book Patrol looks at the three different book-related social networks (although bizarrely doesn’t mention Visual Bookshelf on Facebook), and John Mello’s Social Networks and Baby Boomers: Bonanza or Bust? ticks off the various networks targeting boomers.showing how much action’s going on in even a “niche” category.
- Slashdot’s Social Network Aggregation, Killer app in 2008? links off to a post by Ujwall Tickoo but equally well could have referred to Marc Canter’s post announcing funding for People Aggregator.
- Penthouse buys a group of social networking sites, including adultfriendfinder, for $340 million.
- David Berkowitz notes that the debate about social ads on Facebook is far from over; when even marketers start finding advertising too intrusive, it’s a sign that things are out of whack.
- “Facebook fatigue” makes Business Week’s list of 10 predictions for 2008 and Graham Taylor asks Could 2008 be the year for a social network backlash? If you have a feeling you’ve seen these before, fatigue and backlash were also predicted for 2007).
- Pringo’s CEO Gary Hall makes some social networking predictions for 2008, written up by Eric B. on Social Media Method.