1. Types of Social Networks Social Networks & Business Benefits & Limitations Security of Information? Future of Social Networks Social Media Revolution (Video) Social Networks Tarnjeet Singh Plahe plahet@aston.ac.uk

2. “Broad-range” social networking sites All interests and backgrounds e.g. “Niche” social networking sites Targeted at specific audiences e.g. 400 million users1 75 million users2 1+ billion views a day 20 hours uploaded every minute3 1. Types of Social Networks 125 million users4 4 billion images5 30 million members7 60 million members8 15 million unique visitors6

4. Businesses need to keep up with the pace of social media whilst leveraging its power to their greatest advantage Public visibility Social networking strategy Timing is key, as fast moving websites require timely updates and commitment to fresh posts on a regular basis. Specialist blogs and online forums Competitive advantage Article: The Guardian - BBC tell news staff to embrace social media Technology is changing the nature of journalism Wider range of opinion; giving access to range of voices Improves reporting – allows closer coverage i.e. Haiti earthquake Twitter and RSS readers allow journalists to better understand audience 2. Social Networks & Business

5. 3. Benefits & Limitations Benefits Cost effective strategy e.g. viral marketing Great knowledge sharing approach Opportunity to discover and be discovered by collaborators and even potential employers Expanding upon and building a global business Builds credibility – increasing customers’ confidence Limitations Risk of decline in employee productivity levels Can be time consuming and labour intensive Need to be adaptive to fast pacing changes in social media Lack of anonymity Risk of scammers and identity theft

6. 4. Security of information? Potential exploitation of security holes to access and abuse private details Combination of personal details with visual images – potentially dangerous Personal information is stored in countless databases How secure is this information? Article: Facebook: All Your Stuff is Ours, Even if You Quit Conspiracy theory…? An interesting video about who collects our information on Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOfgUVpb1WA Is Big Brother really watchingspying on us all?

7. 5. Future of Social Networks “ ” …we will no longer search for products and services via a search engine, rather they will find us via social media.9 A semantic web approach Social Searching Sponsored listings Organic listings Social graph listings Universal identities Aggregation of multiple profiles on different social networking sites Click for info on book

8. 6. Social Media Revolution Long version (4 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8 Short version (2 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhPgUcjGQAw

9. Thank youfor watching Any questions…

10. References [1] ARTHUR, C. (2010). Facebook is the new threat to Google [online]. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/09/facebook-google-news-search [Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [2] Network World. (2010). Is Twitter losing its luster? [online]. Available from: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/020110-social-networking-twitter.html [Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [3] Google. (2010). General YouTube Stats (Sundance 2010) [online]. Available from: http://sites.pressatgoogle.com/sundance2010/general-youtube-stats [Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [4 ]CrunchBase. (2010). MySpace Company Profile [online]. Available from: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/myspace [Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [5] E-consultancy.com Ltd. (2010). 20+ mind-blowing social media statistics revisited [online]. Available from: http://econsultancy.com/blog/5324-20+-mind-blowing-social-media-statistics-revisited [Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [6] Flixster. (2010). About Us [online]. Available from: http://www.flixster.com/misc/about[Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [7] Wikipedia. (2010). Last.fm [online]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last.fm [Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [8] LinkedIn. (2008). About Us | LinkedIn - Public Relations [online]. Available from: http://press.linkedin.com/about[Accessed 13 FEB 2010] [9] Socialnomics– Social Media Blog. (2010). 4 Social Media Questions Answered [online]. Available from: http://socialnomics.net/2010/02/03/4-social-media-questions-answered [Accessed 13 FEB 2010]