Events

• Social Networking Conference

  • Jan 22-23, 2009, Miami, US

• OSN'2005

  • Online Conference, February 9-23, 2005
  • OSN2005 was a summit for all those interested in working with social networking processes, tools, and media.
  • ...

Articles

Starting points

• Operating Manual for Social Tools

  • by Corante
• thesocialsoftwareweblog

Articles

• The Looming Facebook Privacy Fiasco

  • by Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch July 1, 2009
  • Facebook’s privacy conference call just ended, and it’s clear some major changes are going to be coming to the social network soon. Some of these, like a totally revamped privacy control page, are both long overdue and very welcome. But others, like the Transition Tool, seem ripe for disaster.

• Social networking sites thriving in tough times

  • Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta, The Business Times, October 24, 2008
  • As people worry about financial security and careers, many will feel compelled to sign up

• The Truth About Online Dating

  • Epstein Robert (2007), Scientific American Mind, February 2007
  • In the U.S. alone, tens of millions of people are trying to find dates or spouses online every day. How accurate are the ads they find? And just how successful is online dating compared with conventional dating? These and other questions have recently stimulated a small explosion of studies by social scientists.

• Congress targets social-networking sites

  • by Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com, June 29, 2006
  • Lawmakers have been trying to get Internet service providers to retain data on customers. Now Congress is turning to sites like MySpace?.

• Social networks poised to shape Net's future

  • By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com, June 12, 2006
  • Social networks, for example, are poised to shape the Internet's future, Rashtchy said, despite some skepticism about how they will make money. Social networks like MySpace?.com are already challenging traditional portals.

• Microsoft licenses new way to make friends

  • By Ina Fried, CNET News.com, April 25, 2006
  • Wallop is a 12-person start-up that hopes to take on sites like Friendster and MySpace?.com by tapping the technology developed by Microsoft's research unit.

• Social networking companies feel pressure

  • The Deal, CNET News.com, May 31, 2005
  • "The sites that have a clear and specific focus have more staying power and are successful," said Konstantin Guericke, vice president of marketing for Mountain View-based LinkedIn?.
  • "If you have a social networking site that everyone can belong to, it's a recipe for disaster."

• Student's start-up draws attention and $13 million

  • by Ellen Rosen, CNET News.com, May 25, 2005
  • About Thefacebook.com

• Steal this bookmark!

  • by Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.com, February 8th, 2005
  • Tagging, the Web's newest game, lets you see what other people are reading and thinking.
  • On social networking sites like Orkut or Friendster, people join, and then declare their alliances to each other explicitly. On sites that employ tagging, the networks emerge, implicitly, out of the shared interests of users. Order isn't proclaimed, it just happens.

• Missed opportunity for Friendster and company?

  • by Gary Rivlin, The New York Times on the Web, January 24, 2005
  • Can online social network copmpanies make money?

• You are who you know

  • By Andrew Leonard, Salon.com
  • The new social software turbo-charges friendships, sexual hookups and the business of human relationship -- and could turn our lives into an open book.

• Online Social Networks Are Havens for Job Hunters

  • by Jeanette Borzo, The Wall Street Journal Online, 23rd September 2004
  • A growing number of professionals from Los Angeles to Lyon to Lijiang are taking Mr. Boghossian's path, using online social networks to build up a list of contacts -- and potentially land a dream job. Unlike regular employment sites, which mainly list want ads and applicants' resumes, social networks are designed to be, well, more social.

• Profiles: The Real Value Of Social Networks

  • by Charlene Li, Forrester Research, July 15, 2004
  • Online social networks, such as Friendster, are helping individuals develop personal and professional relationships more than ever before. Deep, detailed profiles will support the three social network business models: enterprise solutions, consumer payments, and advertising.

  • As these networks mature, they will develop into three types:

    • 1) communication networks dominated by portals;
    • 2) affinity networks based on relationships;
    • and 3) interest-based networks focused on a shared passion.

• Social Nets Not Making Friends

  • by Leander Kahney, Wired, Jan. 28, 2004
  • Sick of invitations to join networking services, and the constant nagging to validate friends or acquaintances, some people are turning against the ever-growing social networking services.

• The new Internet Gamble

  • by Carolina Braunschweig, Venture Capital Journal, December 2003
  • At least 50 million people participate in online social networks to connect with friends and meet people for social activities and business.

• Click to the clique

  • The Guardian?, Thursday January 9, 2003
  • Forget the plonk and canapes, make your new contacts via the ether, says Ben Hammersley

• Social Networking: Partying Like It's 1999

  • By Bill Burnham, March 2004
• ...

Articles (academic)

• The Taste for Privacy: An Analysis of College Student Privacy Settings in an Online Social Network

  • Kevin Lewis, Jason Kaufman, Nicholas Christakis (2008)
  • Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 14 Issue 1, (p 79-100)

• Analyzing online social networks

  • Howard, B. (2008), Commun. ACM 51, 11 (Nov. 2008), 14-16.
  • Social network analysis explains why some sites succeed and others fail, how physical and online social networks differ and are alike, and attempts to predict how they will evolve.

• Can You See Me Now? Audience and Disclosure Regulation in Online Social Network Sites

  • Zeynep Tufekci. (2008)
  • Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society

• Separating Fact from Fiction: An Examination of Deceptive Self-Presentation in Online Dating Profiles

  • Toma, C., Hancock, J. & Ellison, N. (2008).
  • Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, 1023-1036.

• Friends and foes: Ideological social networking

  • Brzozowski, M., Hogg, T., and Szabo, G. 2008.
  • In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing. ACM Press.

• CommunityNetSimulator: Using simulations to study online community networks

  • Jun Zhang, Mark Ackerman and Lada Adamic, C&T2007, Lansing, MI.

• The truth about lying in online dating profiles

  • Hancock, J.T., Toma, C., & Ellison, N. (2007).
  • Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2007), 449-452.

• Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

  • boyd danah and Ellison Nicole (2007);
  • Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1), article 11. October 2007

• Special Theme: Social Network Sites

  • Guest editors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
  • Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1)

• Social Networks Applied

  • by Steffen Staab, Pedro Domingos, Peter Mika, Jennifer Golbeck, Li Ding, Tim Finin, Anupam Joshi, Andrzej Nowak, Robin R. Vallacher, IEEE Intelligent Systems, January/February (Vol. 20, No. 1)
  • Social networks have interesting properties. Building computational models of these networks can help us understand and exploit them. This issue's essays examine applications of these networks' properties.

• Information revelation and privacy in online social networks

  • Gross, R., Acquisti, A., & Heinz, J. H. (2005).
  • In WPES '05: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM workshop on Privacy in the electronic society , (pp. 71-80). New York, NY, USA: ACM Press.

• Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks

  • Danah Boyd, Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 24-29, 2004

• Identity and Search in Social Networks

  • D. J. Watts, P. S. Dodds, and M. E. J. Newman; Science Magazine, vol. 296, no. 5571, pp. 1302-1305 (2002)

• The Strength of Weak Ties

  • Granovetter, M. (1973);
  • American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, Issue 6, May 1360-80.
• ...

Books

• Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom

  • How Online social networking will transform your life, Work and World
  • Matthew Fraser, Soumitra Dutta, November 2008

Journals & magazines

• First monday

• Social Networks

  • An International Journal of Structural Analysis
• Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
• Réseaux
• ...

People and organizations

People

• danah boyd

• Danyel A Fisher

  • His major area of research is studying and designing computer systems that take advantage of social interaction; using tools like social network theory and ethnography.
  • Danyel's blog (and old blog)
• Mark Granovetter
• Barry Wellman

• Nicole B. Ellison

  • recent research has focused on the social capital implications of social network site use and issues of self-presentation, relationship formation and maintainance, and impression formation in online contexts.
• Jon Kleinberg

Organizations

Services and systems

Services

• LinkedIn
• FaceBook
• Ning
• Xing (formally OpenBC)
• orkut
• Ryze
• friendster
• Tribes
• OpenBC
• MySpace
• --- french OSN
• 6nergy
• Viadeo (formely Viaduc)
• --- reunions
• reunion

• Passado

  • Passado is Europe’s largest reunion site that allows you to get in contact with your school friends for FREE

• Thefacebook.com

  • Thefacebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges.

• Copains d'avant (french)

  • The search engine for discovering people, companies and relationships
• --- dating
• dating watch
• Meetic
• Attractive World
• --- directory
• zoominfo
• --- misc
• academici

Exclusive Services

• a small world

  • A private online community designed for those who already have strong connections with one another. By invitation only.

• The Financial Times top executives Networking site

  • The Financial Times is launching a social networking service for top executives in the media and technology sectors, with membership costing as much as £2,000 per year.
• Diamond Lounge

Systems

• wikipedia: Social Networking Software

• AROUNDMe

  • An open source online social networking platform, from Barnraiser

• Locus

  • Locus is a Jabber client written in Python, that uses Bayesian statistical analysis to find likenesses between the messages that your friends send you.

• Huminity

  • Connecting Blogs, Chat and Social networking into the first Social Ecosystem

Prototypes

• Social network visualisation

  • at JRC EMM Lab

Other

• Plaxo

  • Had enough of returned holiday cards? Tired of typing in new contact information? Plaxo takes the hassle out of updating your address book.
• Socialtext
• Wallop

• Visible Path

  • social-networking software for businesspeople

• Frappr (Friend Mapper)

  • Frappr lets you see the zip code where your friends live or work, letting you find out who works in the office building next door and who lives in the apartment complex across the street.

• Barnraiser

  • A network of people that have come together to create free social networking and interest group software.

• Cortege

  • By combining contact management with advanced graphics, Cortege adds a new dimension to your Outlook contacts - transforming them into an interactive map of your business or personal network.

Examples of application

• new business oportunity
• job search
• friendship

Projects and initiatives

• the Small World Project

  • Online experiment to test the 6 degree of separation theory

• Wallop

  • A project from Microsoft research
  • In Wallop, you can share photos, blog, and interact with your friends. Wallop is a research project that explores how people share media and build conversations in the context of social networks.

• ReferralWeb

  • Social Networks graphically represent the relationships between friends, colleagues, and co-workers. The ReferralWeb? system automatically creates social networks from public information available on the World Wide Web.

Standards

• FOAF

  • (Friend of a Friend)
  • FOAF allows the expression of personal information and relationships, and is a useful building block for creating information systems that support online communities.
  • FOAF is an RDF format intended to provide "a way of representing information about people in a way that is easily processed, merged and aggregated" and is primarily concerned with allowing an author to provide a detailed personal description, as well as provide machine-readable links to, and information about, other people.

• XFN

  • (XHTML Friends Network)
  • XFN is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks. In recent years, blogs and blogrolls have become the fastest growing area of the Web. XFN enables web authors to indicate their relationship(s) to the people in their blogrolls simply by adding a 'rel' attribute to their "a href" tags.
• ...

Miscellaneous

• Introvertster

  • Introvertster is an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harrassing you online.
• tagging

• What's a party without 'eye candy'?

  • By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY, 20 September 2004
  • LeeAnne? Homsey plies her trade as a professional motivator as something called a "Jellin Shot Girl." Dressed in sparkle tops and short-shorts, Homsey says two Jellin Shot Girls can walk into a party of 200 and within 45 minutes meet and introduce most everyone.

• ziki

  • combining wiki and social networking