What is “community” according to Boyd and does changing the meaning of the word matter to your profession?
This paper talks about the definition of community for Boyd and what friendship means and how is affected by both social processes and technological limitations. Social Networks such as My Space and Facebook are sites which construct and require people to indicate relationship with other members. In other words people say that they are friends on these sites, they must be friends in other contexts as well. Participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally. How do you define who is your friend? Normally friendship involves some degree of mutual love, support and admiration that are expected to provide a shoulder to cry on. But this definition in social networks is not always applied.
When people login to a social network, face book or My Space for example, and they want to “add” someone as a friend. A profile picture with your demographic information will pop out. Below your picture there is a box where you have to click saying “add as a friend” and directly it will send a message to the other participant. Some people click “accept friend” and directly you join their network or community. However you can “decline;” expecting significant social cost by rejecting someone. (Boyd 2004) “
Investigating Friendship in Live Journal, Kate Raynes- Goldie and Fono found that there was much inconsistency in why people are friends with others. The most common reasons for friendship were”
- They are actual friends
- Acquaintances, family members, colleagues
- It would be socially inappropriate to say no because you know them
- Having lots of friends makes you look popular
- It’s a way of indicating that you are a fan of that person, band or product.
While the first 3 reasons all concern people that you know, the rest can explain why people connect to a lot of people they do not know. For example if someone seems interesting or you want to get to know them better, what’s the loss in Friending them. As far as most participant concern, friendship doesn’t mean anything really, so why not?
Connection and Collecting friends: Your actual list of friends not only consist in true friends, but friends such as: fellow partygoers, family, people they knew and people you thought you knew them. Still you can edit your profile with your top friends, allowing and showing connections that really say something about what they are. Not only groups like 8 top friends exist. For example you can join any community such as tennis fan of Federek, join your favourite soccer team, scuba diving, favourite artists, products etc.
2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report:
- The 35-54 years old demo is growing fastest with a 276.4 %.
- The 25-34 year population on Facebook is doubling every 6 months
- There are more females ( 55.7) than males ( 42.2) on Facebook
- Advertising Campaigns for Tobacco are 27912480 users
People are regularly projecting themselves into the Internet so that other may view their presence and interact with them .As mentioned before, whenever you join any group or community , it goes directly to your profile wall so people can see and join too. Social networks sites take this to the next level since members there write their community into being through the process of friending
For marketers and Advertisers I new world is opening. In the last couple of years, Facebook has gone from a college photo-sharing site to a business- networking platform for self-promotion, advertising and multimedia interaction. Now you can host events, advertise your businesses services and products through social ads, and more. For example application for both blackberry and I phone you can find in these social networks. . What it matters is that you can identify, whenever you support of your friends for example they are there for you. It has become the new way of reaching mass users in a short period of time. The old and traditional strategy for marketers are been change. Due to the impact of the introduction of the Facebook as a “big thing” Platform, As a result, many of these companies have been forced to change their strategy to stay in the business. Today social technologies are rewriting all the rules. The function of all marketers is to adapt as soon as possible to implement new plans to sell gain customers. As Ivy Brown director of Splenda says:
” Facebook offered us the opportunity not only to advertise with a brand message and a product message but also the opportunity to solicit feedback and to have our target raise their hand and say, ‘I want to sample this product,’”
As a conclusion the meaning of the world community does not change for marketers. As Boyd discuss facebook or my Space communities are growing each time more and more. From been just a social network, as said before its becoming a business network.
Reference:
Boyd, Danah, H. (2006). Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites. First Monday, volume 11, number 12
The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook
Smith, C. (2009). Facebook Is the Future of CRM. CRM Magazine, 13(11), 12. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
Zmuda, N. (2009). Facebook turns focus group with Splenda product-sampling app. Advertising Age, 80(25), 18. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.