boyd & Ellison (2007) defined social network sites “as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” Most notably, these authors explained a difference in semantics between the terms social network and social networking. Users of social networks, according to boyd & Ellison, primarily communicate with people in their offline or extended network as a means of keeping in toch. Social networking sites, on the other hand, are aimed at people looking to initiate new relationships.
Beer’s issue with boyd & Ellison’s use of the term social network site is that it’s much too broad. boyd & Ellison are very specific with the way they identify social networking sites, but very open with their definition of social network sites. Thus, it seems that social network sites become broad buckets that anything which isn’t a social networking site is tossed into. Beer notes this is problematic because, for example, both YouTube and Facebook could be considered a social network site, even though they are very different applications.
Beer was also concerned the direction of future research on social network(ing) sites. He felt that boyd & Ellison focused too much on the user instead of looking at a broader picture that includes cultural and capitalism impacts on evolving media. At the end of his article, he stated that “So, when we ask about who are using SNS and for what purposes, we should not just think about those with profiles, we should also be thinking about…how SNS can be understood as archives of the everyday that represent vast and rich source of transactional data about a vast population of users.” Hargittai and Hsieh also have concerns with boyd & Ellison’s research on the grounds that it does not account for differences among individual users or groups of users.
Social network(ing) sites seem different than online communities because of the sense of individual over the group. Social networks are all about individuals building their networks or managing networks they already have. Communities, on the other hand, are about engaging in deeper relationships, often times with people you don’t know offline, to discuss shared interest topics and information.
I found it very interesting point that the broader picture that Beer pointed out in which you described as : “includes cultural and capitalism impacts on evolving media.” But could you please explain more or give examples for this statment so I can understand your point better?
I also agree with you that social networks are all about individuals and that online communities have deeper relationships that are based on a common interest.
I think you and I are on the same page with our definitions of connections within communities versus SNS. Of the few people I know that are part of an online community, it is all with people they haven’t met and they are connecting with them based on a shared hobby or other special interest. While many of my Facebook “friends” are people I may have only met once or a few times and I have little in common with most of them, but the ability to maintain a large network of diverse connections is too valuable to “de-friend” those that I’m not actually friends with “in real life”.
This reiterates the point that we value our existing networks. There are inhibitions to adding strangers to our networks, but think of how many acquaintances we add without sufficient knowledge for doing so. It is just as much a risk to our privacy and security as meeting strangers. Like you mention, we value larger, diverse connections and sometimes weak ties latch on and we keep them in our networks, just in case.