Friday 25 May 2007

Social Networking Sites inside Media Corporations’ Web of Media Products

How do you differentiate a Friend from a friend? While the latter was
defined as “a person attached to another by feelings of affection and
personal regard” on dictionary.com,the former is trickier to explain and relates to the new craze withinonline communities. A Friend is a feature from social networking sites consists of member’s internal networking community. Social networking site is a website service that allows its user or member to establish and develop social networking communities by presenting themselves publicly through a Profile and Testimonials/Comments from the people within their networks (boyd, 2004:1). The participants behind the recent hype of social networking sites were not only people as individual but also media conglomerates and business communities. This essay will discuss the power of social networking sites that attracts so many participants and the participation types. It will first examine how these sites may extend the possibilities of networking for their members. It will then continue to discuss why many media corporations attracted to involve in the business of social networking sites. Finally, it will explore the tensions, which were resulted by the act of media convergence of those media giants in relation to social networking sites. Although there are many social networking sites and still emerging, this essay will focus onFriendster , for it has started this type of sites, and MySpace as the most popular social networking sites currently.

Socialising the networking culture


Social networking sites has become ever popular since it first gained attention in 2003, which was Friendster, and more similar sites were born such as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, iShoals, Bebo, Multiply and many more. The fact that these social networking sites are online has created inclusion and exclusion of people who have access to the internet not to mention the necessity to have internet literacy/competence to be active participants in the services. Nevertheless, these social networking sites have indeed extended the possibilities of networking in several ways. Firstly, it provides the tool to build social networking communities. As defined in Friendster Terms of Services, Friendster [is] an online community that connects people through networks of friends for communicating, sharing and making new friends”. The main idea of these sites is to create an online community, whether it is based on dating interest (Friendster) or music (MySpace), these sites provide a virtual space where they can build a new form of networking communities based on a variety of reasons (boyd, 2004: 2).

Secondly, the fact that it is online and thus broke the spatial and periodical limitations allows people to connect and reconnect with other people based on interests, and personal information. In the case ofFriendster, it has collected 37 million registered members from about 75 countries (ZDNet News, 2007) within a virtual space. Moreover, Friendster provides a messaging tool for its members to communicate with each other, an embedded service similar to email system. Thus, it is not surprising to found out thatFriendster not only provides the access but also offers the opportunity to “reconnect” with long lost friend (boyd, 2004: 3). Internet has allowed people to communicate easily by breaking the time and spatial boundaries, and these social networking sites only take it further granting these same people an access to build networks among each other.

Thirdly, the simplicity and user-friendliness of its application while offering complex information and connections attract many people to join the services and start opening their access to a wide range of communities in many places. As described above, each of the users web page consist of personal and demographical information, which they create subjectively, a Testimonials or Comments from their Friends within their network and, a Bulletin Board, which contains announcements or invitation that can be read by other users within their networks. In fact, these tools that allows members to create their network publicly and put it on display for others to cross over and take advantage of are features that distinguish social networking sites from other computer mediated communication sites (boyd, 2006: 5). The simplicity of these tools and the fact that it is accessible for free has attracted many people to make use of these services. Although mostFriendster users browse for people out of curiosity, headhunters also use the service to dig up potential employees’ personal lives (boyd, 2004: 3). Users who exploit the benefit of their social network are not necessarily the same users who benefit from the network structure of Friendster that allows them to attract and connect with their potential clients or costumers (boyd, 2004: 3).

These three characteristics of the social networking sites are the main
features that allow and encourage members of these sites to build, rebuild and extend their online networks community.

Media Convergence: to be and to have


These social networking sites are rich with members’ personal data and other related information and have a direct access to those information. These information and the network itself can be valuable for corporate marketing strategy, cross marketing strategy targeting not only the big and general market but especially scattered niche market based on the available network communities within the site. As McChesney (1998: 27) points out, global media corporations have realised how internet can be a cost effective and lucrative tool in targeting their global market. This ever advancing new technologies has not only cut down the production and distribution costs but also providing an expanding number of delivery channels that give more power to the consumer to be creative with the media content they received (Jenkins, 2004: 33). Furthermore, marketers are eventually learned that their desirable young consumers were spending times lavishly cramming these sites and thus allocating more funds into advertisement placement in online communities (Olsen, 2005). All the services these social networking sites offer to their users and the information that it holds were seen as attractive for the big media company to take part in the business of social networking sites. There is a new trend emerging among the media giants to go out and shop for these social networking sites. Some examples including Friendster who declined Google’s $30 million offer to buy the site (Rivlin, 2006), MySpace accepted NewsCorp’s offer for a $580 million bid and recently Yahoo! offers $1bn to get Bebo, a similar social networking sites, to come under its wing (Dey, 2007).

To own one of these increasingly popular social networking sites is not the same as being part or becoming a member on one of these online networking communities. For what its worth, not only people as a person who use the services for personal networking, many bands, celebrities, movie stars, politicians started to join one and become active users (many of these celebrities useMySpace) and even big corporations began creating profiles for their products and brands (boyd, 2006: 6). All of them were trying to use it as modes of interaction with their potential clients, costumers, fans or voters and bring it to a more personal and casual relationships as a way to build their network communities. These benefits are coming from a small amount of fee, if not for free (boyd, 2006: 6). These commercially driven users were the one who realises the benefits and advantages they can reap by collecting Friends, especially for marketing and promotion purposes, and thus it is also important for them to give some benefits to their Friends or in other word, their loyal fans, costumers or clients (boyd, 2006: 8).

The concern of the shift towards centralised media ownership and the idea of old/traditional media collaborating with new media to reach wider market fit in this discussion by the same token of media convergence. As Lawson-Borders (2006: 4) suggests, convergence is a range of possibilities that comes out as a result of cooperation between old and traditional media (print and broadcast) and new media (computer and internet) in disseminating information to the public. However, it is also important to note that the information flow within the process of media convergence is not one way towards the audience, but rather two-way interactional between the content producers and consumers (Lawson-Borders, 2006: 8). To put it in Jenkins’ words, “Convergence is both a top-down corporate driven process and a bottom-up consumer driven process” (Jenkins, 2004:37). The interaction with the audience or consumer helps these corporate media giants maintain relationships and keep themselves up to date with what consumer wants. In addition to this, media corporations also interested in buying these social networking sites as a way to maintain their brand image aligning it with the latest trends, conserving their ‘historical specialty’ of collecting and delivering information, news and entertainment (Lawson-Borders, 2006: 6). A good example of this is how NewsCorp incorporated press coverage for the promotion of its newly bought MySpace and this ‘free’ promotion has helped MySpace to grow larger and attracting different demographics (parents, teachers, marketers) to take the plunge into this social networking sites (boyd, 2006: 13). NewsCorp was known for possessing many successful media channels and its thematic tendency towards popular and mass culture. Thus for NewsCorp, buying MySpace, who has overtaken Friendster’s popularity as the most visited social networking sites (Olsen,2005), means maintaining its brand image and historical specialty in providing “top quality” entertainment that attract mass audience as well as a marketing strategy to reach more audience as dicussed above.

Posts that contain Myspace per day for the last 30 days.
Technorati Chart



Posts that contain Friendster per day for the last 30 days.
Technorati Chart



It is within this process of media convergence, mostly done by big media corporations, that the power and popularity of social networking sites were seen as promising a bright future for their existence as the global media giants especially because these sites can reach global market and allows interactivity with and between their users with relatively lower cost.

The tug of war : tensions beneath the screen

This phenomenon of social networking sites attracting corporate media giants is not with out tensions. Although it covers different types of tensions (actual/virtual relationship, local/global coverage, private/public information and production/consumption processes), in relation to media convergence, two main tensions that cut deep with the power of these social networking sites users are: private vs. public information and production vs. consumption processes.

Social networking sites are unique in its approach to personal information. They were comprised of a unique combination of “public exhibition” of personal information in order to build personal networks (boyd, 2004:4). These sites let their members to set the limit and boundaries as to what extent their personal information can be revealed to general public, that is anyinternet users. This, along with other cautionary information on how to protect members’ personal information, was stated in site’s terms of services and privacy policy (Friendster Privacy Policy , Friendster Terms of Service Agreement , MySpace Privacy Policy, MySpace Terms and Conditions ). Members were also warned about the use of their information “in a non-personally identifiable manner” (Friendster Privacy Policy , Friendster Terms of Service Agreement ) to advertisers or third parties as their “good intention” delivering a more targeted advertising, products and services that were ‘of most interest’ to the members (Friendster Privacy Policy , Friendster Terms of Service Agreement ). The tensions occurs as the personal information were used by the information holders, that is the social networking site, to create ad networks that sells products based on members’ personal interests while the members put out their personal information for public naively or rather,narcissistically. With the aggregation of media ownership in which a media corporation may possesses different kinds of media channel including internet, in this case a social networking site; they also own a massive corporate database of members personal information accessible for them to promote, enhance their marketing strategy, or simply gain revenues
from this database as their target market. Members are flooded with commercial driven messages without realizing it, that even members’ personal information was used as a commodity by these corporate giants. When the corporate goals conquer members’ needs and rights, these social networking sites were only becoming corporate tools to serve their needs. In fact, as McChesney (1998: 33) argues that what is very concerning about the global media giants is not so much about their control over exported media content, but also their control over media distribution that make it seems impenetrable for small competitors or newcomers. In this context, social networking sites serve as media distribution in which it can disseminates messages to and between its members as well as media content where it provides a massive database of personal information.

Another important debate in relation to social networking sites and media convergence is the negotiation between media producers and media consumers in terms of its content. As discussed above, the decision to includeinternet as one of the most prominent media channel is because of its interactional nature of the media that allows the media producers and consumers to negotiate about its content. Within this interaction, the media producers not only needed to continue supplying the usual informational products for general market but also providing products or services
that may attract their loyal media consumers as a reply to their needs (Lawson-Borders 2006: 8). This can only be done by informing the media producers what their loyal costumers need and want to consume. The media consumer also can contribute to the production process of what they will consume in the future from this interaction. Eventually the boundaries between media producers and consumers will be blurred.

Although the issue of media convergence and its significance to social networking sites consist of many tensions and negotiations, two main debates were discussed above. It is clear that these tensions has resulted in the downfall of clear boundaries that traditionally has always exist such as the boundaries between what is considered private and what is appropriate for public consumption, and the clear
differences on the tasks of media producers and media consumers. These tug of wars were happening behind the computer screen that mostinternet users do not realize its existence.

Conclusion

Social networking sites have been the new craze of internet users and their future prospect does not show a declining tendency with the help of media conglomerates who were expanding their media empires to the field of new media. These social network sites has expanded the possibilities of networking in three ways, that is (a) by providing the tool, (b) by breaking the spatial and time limitations, thus allowing
people to connect and reconnect easier beyond those limitations, and (c) by simplicity and user-friendliness making it more accessible for people to participate. These benefits that were offered has successfully attract many participants as well as media corporations who wants to reach bigger and global market. It has also become one of the magnets that attract many companies to plunge into ‘online
community’ by either buying and therefore possessing this social networking sites as many media giants did or becoming a member in one of the sites to promote products and services to a more targeted market demography with global reach. The media convergence as a process that many corporations have currently been involving may include social networking sites at part of its products. This process is not without tensions and negotiations. Two of the most prominent debates in relation to this issue are the collapsing boundaries between private and public space that include the information and the appropriateness of it to be disseminated, also the collapsing boundaries between media production and media consumption. In the end, social networking sites will always challenge the creativity of people, media producers,
innovators and creators to build a product that the future consumers will choose to attend to (Lawson-Borders 2006: 161).

List of References

  • boyd, danah, (2006) ‘Friends, Friendster and Top 8: Writing Community into Being on Social Network Sites’. In First Monday 11, 12. Retrieved on 8 January 2007 from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/index.html


  • boyd, danah. (2004) “Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks”. Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 24-29, 2004. Retrieved on 12 May 2007 from http://www.danah.org/papers/CHI2004Friendster.pdf


  • Dey, Ian. (2007). ‘Yahoo may net Bebo owners $1bn’, Sunday Telegrapgh, 20 May 2007, Retrieved on 21 May 2007 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/05/20/cnbebo20.xml


  • Friendster Terms of Service Agreement. Retrieved on 18 May 2007 from http://www.friendster.com/info/tos.php


  • Friendster Term of Services. Retrieved on 18 May 2007 from http://www.friendster.com/info/tos.php


  • Jenkins, Henry. (2004). “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1): 33-43


  • Lawson-Borders, G. (2006). Media Organizations and Convergence: Case Studies of Media Convergence Pioneers. New Jersey: Lawrence rlbaum Associates, Publishers.


  • McChesney (1998) ‘Media Convergence and Globalisation’, in Daya Kishan Thusu (ed) Electronic Empires: Global Media and Local Resistance. London: Arnold.


  • MySpace Privacy Policy. Retrieved on 18 May 2007 from http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Pages/Privacy.aspx


  • MySpace Terms and Conditions. Retrieved on 18 May 2007 from http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Pages/TermsConditions.aspx


  • Olsen, Stephanie. (2005). “Friendster Overture not Endearing to All”, ZDNet News, 10 November 2005. Retrieved on 21 May 2007 from http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5942893.html


  • Rivlin, G. (2006). ‘How Friendster lost chance for a jackpot’, The International Herald Tribune, 16 October 2006, p.11


  • ZDNet News (2007). “Friendster Makes Google Its Ad, Seach Supplier”, ZDNet News, 7 March 2007. Retrieved on 18 May 2007 from http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6165051.html