Preface
The internet has brought us many things. We saw the birth of free knowledge, we saw how
internet brought us free speech, and we saw how it can create revolutions and destroy a
government. In creating this revolution, the things that played the most significant role are the
social networks. Since their introduction, social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace,
Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have
integrated these sites into their daily practices. As of this writing, there are hundreds of SNSs,
with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices.
While their key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge around
SNSs are varied. Most sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social networks, but
others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Some
sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or
shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality-based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to
which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile
connectivity, blogging,
and
photo/video-sharing.
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What are Social Networks
Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural
communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although social networking is
possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most
popular online.
When it comes to online social networking, websites are commonly used. These websites are
known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of
internet users. Depending on the website in question, many of these online community
members share common interests in hobbies, religion, politics and alternative lifestyles. Once
you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This
socialization may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even
contacting
them.
Fig. Social Networks
The friends that you can make are just one of the many benefits to social networking online.
Another one of those benefits includes diversity because the internet gives individuals from
all around the world access to social networking sites. This means that although you are in
the United States, you could develop an online friendship with someone in Denmark or India.
Not only will you make new friends, but you just might learn a thing or two about new
cultures or new languages and learning is always a good thing.
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The evolution of Social Networks:
From Social needs to Booming
Businesses
Since the birth of the internet, people have always been interested to communicate with this
new medium. Since socializing is in their blood, they started to develop different platforms
for increasing and improving this communication. From the birth of email, people tried to
look for more ways that could provide seamless communication with others. People were
fascinated to see that they could send and receive the messages that that the others were
sending.
But that wasn’t enough. The people wanted a whole community not a simple peer to peer
communication system, and so, came the “Bulletin board System”.
Fig-1. STAR-LIT BBS: The First Step of Social Networking
Although the first attempts of communication with multiple people standing-by was used
mostly by drug dealers, anarchists, and the sorts of other people dealing with illegal stuff, this
was a start of a whole new type of community. From here on, the people started to feel the
need for two different type’s communiqué. One the most people felt that they needed connect
to people like they do with others when they are face to face or real-time communication.
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This gave birth to the Phenomenon that we now known as “instant messages” or IM for short.
The main system was IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and it was developed in 1988 and used for
file sharing, link sharing and otherwise keeping in touch. It was really the father of instant
messaging as we know it today. IRC was mostly UNIX-based though, limiting access to most
people. ICQ was developed in the mid-90s and was the first instant messaging program for
PCs. It was at least partly responsible for the adoption of avatars, abbreviations (LOL, BRB)
and emoticons. Other IM clients soon followed.
Fig-2. icq
The Second need that the people felt was a need the development of the existing BBS’s. This
was the first earliest form of social networks. These were really descendants of the BBSs
popular in the 70s and 80s, but usually came with a more user-friendly interface, making
them easier for non-technical visitors to use. Various forum platforms, including VBulletin
and phpBB were developed, many of which are still used for forums. Forums remain a
popular part of online culture, and many have made strides to add more social networkingtype features.
Fig-3. Vbulletin – One of the oldest forum making platforms
The first modern social network, “Six Degrees” was launched in 1997. It was much like the
online dating sites that matched random people according to their interests. But “Six degees”
emphasized on making people meet with friends of other friends. This became an instant hit
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but it was still a not enough for the people. While the site is no longer functional, at one time
it was actually quite popular and had around a million members at its peak. This was the time
people saw the importance of these social networking sites. Others followed soon enough.
“Friendster” was launched on 2000 on the ashes of “six degrees”. Even at this point, the main
income that the company had was from all the ads on its many pages generated by the users.
Fig-4. Friendster – One of the first successful social networking sites
More and more site sites with premium services started surfacing to the market. “LinkdIn”
was the first social network that demanded money from its users. “LinkedIn” is a social
network for professionals where they could make a profile or a resume of themselves which
helped them to get jobs. It was launched in 2003 and reached profitability in 2006.
Myspace was launched in 2003 which is run solely on the ads that it shows on its pages.
In 2004, the world saw the dawn of facebook. Although it was limited to the people of only a
few colleges in the US, it was very popular among the people. In 2006, when it was made
public for the entire world to use which led the number of individual users to skyrocket.
Recently in may this year, the company held an initial public offering on May 17, 2012,
negotiating a share price of $38 apiece, valuing the company at $104 billion, the largest
valuation to date for a newly listed public company.
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Masters of the art:
The companies
In the many years of internet, people saw many networks just come and go, and many of
them just died even though they were the pioneers of this movement. Below we give a list of
four of the most influential social networks that were ever created according to their date of
creation
 Myspace
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Pinterest
 Google +
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“Myspace” (previously styled as MySpace and My_____) is a social networking service
owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August
2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1
million unique U.S. visitors.
Myspace was founded in 2003 and was acquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580
million. From 2005 until early 2008, Myspace was the most visited social networking site in
the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United
States. In April 2008, Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in the number of unique
worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009.
Since then, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns.
As of December 2011, Myspace was ranked 138th by total web traffic.
Features:
Myspace has a feature that allows people to post messages for everyone to see. This is called
a Bulletin. In early 2006, Myspace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses
one's Myspace account as a screen name. A Myspace user logs in to the client using the same
e-mail associated with his or her Myspace account. Myspace had a groups feature which
allowed them to be part of a single community within a community. But because of too much
spamming and phising attacks, the group feature was turned off and was promised a more
simplified form.
Myspace mainly became famous for its music sharing capabilities. Myspace profiles for
musicians in the website's Myspace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing
artists to upload their entire discographies consisting of MP3 songs. The uploader must have
rights to use the songs (e.g. their own work, permission granted, etc.). Unsigned musicians
can use Myspace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among
Myspace users. In early 2007, Myspace introduced MyspaceTV, a service similar to the
YouTube video sharing website. Myspace has been showing videos as early as 2006, but it
has changed its name to MySpaceTV for a while. In 2009, the reverted back to Myspace
video.
Myspace also introduced features like in-site blogging, known as blurb, notes etc. one of the
most notable features of Myspace is that the users can make custom profiles using HTML
codes.
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Company profit sources
The company operates solely on the revenues that are generated by advertisements hosted on
the site. Myspace uses behavioral targeting to select ads the each of the visitors. In 2006,
Google signed a $900 million deal to that gave the site the facility to of a customized Google
search engine within the site. Many small companies profited from it by making many
widgets and accessories for the site. Many other companies created customized layouts to
customize their profiles.
In November 2008, Myspace announced that user-uploaded content that infringed on
copyrights held by MTV and its subsidiary networks would be redistributed with
advertisements that would generate revenue for the companies.
Furure plans of the company
The company has been changed hand quite often. In 2005, the company was bought by
Rupert Murdoch from its parent company eUniverse. In 2011, it was sold to Specific Media
and American pop star Justin Timberlake. It is unclear where this company is going because
it has been bested by facebook almost 4 years ago. The company hasn’t lost their hopes
entirely of course. They have announced that they are undergoing a massive change which
will they believe will prove more than positive for the company.
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Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, owned and
operated by Facebook, Inc. What started as a prank soon became craze for people resulting in
a website with over 900 million active users, as of May 2012, more than half of them using
mobile devices. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a
personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic
notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest
user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and
categorize their friends into lists such as "People from Work" or "Close Friends". The name
of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the
academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to
know each other. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years
old to become registered users of the site.
Features
The first feature that anyone sees is the profile upon registration to the site. Then he/she is
guided to his/her profile. Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests,
contact information, and other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and
other users through private or public messages and a chat feature they can also create and join
interest groups and "like pages".
Facebook has been faced with much criticism over the years. After a lawsuit that cost them
$350 million, facebook upgraded their systems and gave their people a customized security
system.
Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature where could talk
about their life and their work. On September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which
appears on every user's homepage and highlights information including profile changes,
upcoming events, and birthdays of the user’s friend and families. Facebook launched Gifts on
February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the
recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase and a personalized message can be
attached to each gift. Since April 2011 Facebook users have had the ability to make live voice
calls via Facebook Chat, allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. On July
6, 2011, Facebook launched its video calling services using Skype as its technology partner.
Rumor has it that, it will launch an app store with many free and premium and available apps
to choose from.
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Company financial statistics
Facebook has seen its revenue grow substantially from 2007 to 2011, increasing from $153
million to $3.7 billion. At the end of 2010 Facebook accumulated $250 million of long term
debt, by 2011 this amount was paid off. Rather than approximately $400 million in capital
lease obligations, Facebook does not carry any debt but holds $1.5 billion of cash on its clean
balance sheet in addition to $2.4 billion of marketable securities. Surprisingly, Facebook
records only $162 million of goodwill and intangible assets, approximately only 3% of its
total asset book value. With pro forma working capital of $4.03 billion, Facebook has a very
strong balance sheet. Furthermore, Facebook also has stable cash flow generating operations
as it recorded $470 million in free cash flow in 2011, a year-over-year increase of 150%.
It could be concluded that, the social media giant supports healthy financial statements which
indicate that the site deserves the high valuations forecasted for the initial public offering.
Facebook’s IPO will most likely be the biggest financial event of 2012, assuming that the
Eurozone doesn’t collapse, especially for those who were lucky enough to acquire early
shares in the company. The number “1,000” has been thrown around recently to estimate the
number of overnight millionaires that Facebook’s offering will create upon its offering.
Future plans
The founder of the company Mark Zuckerberg has recently talked about the future of this
company, which, to some, seems too controversial and farfetched. In an interview, when
asked about the future planning of this company, “he replied in five years, we want to see
everything become a social phenomenon. If this were some other company people would say
that they are crying wolf. But when it’s the company that owns the 2nd most visited site in the
world, then one starts to wonder how large is their thoughts.
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Twitter is an online social networking service and micro-blogging service that enables its
users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140characters, known as "tweets". It was
created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly gained
worldwide popularity, with over 140 million active users as of 2012, generating over 340
million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, the
Twitter website has become one of the top 10 most visited on the Internet, and has been
described as "theSMS of the Internet." Unregistered users can read the tweets, while
registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for
mobile devices.
Features
Twitter enables its users to send or post text messages within 140 characters. These
messages or tweets are kind of like the status system featured in facebook. The people can
post links and tag other users on the posts. Users can send and receive messages from other
users easily. One can follow many of people and companies that they like. This feature has
proven to be well suited for multinational companies and celebrities where they post about
their daily lives and works.
Twitter has been used to create popular trends and to circulate news. Many corporations use
twitter to share their advances and news about their companies.
Sources of profit
For many years, it seemed liked twitter wasn’t here to profits but rather to make friends. Snce
it had a large amount of funding to begin with, it didn’t had to think about revenues. But on
April 13, 2010, Twitter announced plans to offer paid advertising for companies that would
be able to purchase "promoted tweets" to appear in selective search results on the Twitter
website, similar to Google Adwords' advertising model. As of April 13, Twitter announced it
had already signed up a number of companies wishing to advertise including Sony Pictures,
Red Bull, Best Buy, and Starbucks.
To continue their advertising campaign, Twitter announced on March 20, 2012, that it would
be bringing its promoted tweets to mobile devices. Twitter generated $139.5 million in
advertising sales during 2011 and expects this number to grow 86.3% to $259.9 million in
2012.
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The company generated $45 million in annual revenue in 2010, after beginning sales midway
through that year. The company operated at a loss through most of 2010. Revenues were
forecast for $100 million to $110 million in 2011. Users' photos can generate royalty-free
revenue for Twitter, with an agreement with WENN being announced in May 2011. In June
2011, Twitter announced that it would offer small businesses a self-serve advertising system.
Future Plans
Twitter is going steady with steady with its services. Because of competitions, it’s not
revealing any of its future plans. However, on July 2009, some of Twitter's revenue and user
growth documents were published on TechCrunch after being illegally obtained by hacker
group. The documents projected 2009 revenues of $400,000 in the third quarter and
$4 million in the fourth quarter along with 25 million users by the end of the year. The
projections for the end of 2013 were $1.54 billion in revenue, $111 million in net earnings,
and 1 billion users. No information about how Twitter planned to achieve those numbers was
published. In response, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone published a blog post suggesting the
possibility of legal action against the hacker.
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Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and
manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users
can browse other pinboards for inspiration,’re-pin' images to their own collections and/or
'like' photos. Pinterest's mission is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they
find interesting" via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing. Pinterest allows its
users to share 'pins' on both Twitter and Facebook, which allows users to share and interact
with a broad community. Founded by Ben Silbermann, of West Des Moines, Iowa, the site is
managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors. It
is one of the “fastest growing social services in the world.”
Features
Pinterest users can upload, save, sort and manage images, known as pins, and other media
content (i.e. videos) through collections known as pinboards. Pinboards are generally
themed so that pins can easily be organized, categorized and discovered by other users.
Pinterest acts as a personalized media platform, whereby your own content as well as anyone
else's uploaded pins can be browsed on the main page. Users can then save their favorite pins
to one of their own boards using the “Pin It” button. Content can also be found outside of
Pinterest and similarly uploaded to a board via the “Pin It” button which can be downloaded
to the bookmark bar on a web browser.
On the main Pinterest page, a "pin feed" appears, displaying the chronological activity from
the pinterest boards that a user follows. When browsing for new boards and relevant pins,
users can visit a "Tastemakers" page that recommend pinboards with content similar to
previous pins saved by a user. For both guests and Pinterest users, there are currently four
main sections to browse: everything, videos, popular and gifts. These subcategories provide
an organized system of browsing, which helps fellow users to connect and share interests.
Quick links to Pinterest include the "pin it" button that can be added to the bookmark bar of a
web browser, "Follow me" and "Pin it" buttons added to personal website or blog page, and
the Pinterest iPhone application available through the App store.
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Sources of profit
Like twitter, this one also has some Shady revenue sources. It’s still not clear from where
they receive the money to run this site, but there are some rumors what could be their sources
of income. One rumor has it that pinterest puts branded pins on the site for little amount of
money from the owners of those brands. There is also a rumor that that the links posted on
the site are affiliated links from pinterest itself.
Future plans
It has only been a year since its launch so it’s too early to decide about the company plans.
But it’s certain that it will grow to be a more interesting network by 2-3 years.
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Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus, sometimes abbreviated as G+ is
a multilingual social networking and identity service owned and operated by Google Inc.. It
was launched in June 28, 2011. Currently it has a total of 170 million active users. oogle+
integrates social services such as Google Profiles, and introduces new services identified as
Circles, Hangouts and Sparks. Google+ is available as a website and on mobile devices.
Sources such as The New York Times have declared it Google's biggest attempt to rival the
social network Facebook.
Features
“Stream” is an input box which allows users to enter a post. Along with the text entry field
there are icons to upload and share photos and videos. The Stream can be filtered to show
only posts from specific Circles.
"Circles" enable users to organize people into groups for sharing across various Google
products and services. Although other users may be able to view a list of people in a user's
collection of Circles, they cannot view the names of those Circles.
"Hangouts" are places used to facilitate group video chat. "Messenger" (formerly: Huddle)
is a feature available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for communicating through
instant messaging within Circles
“Google+ Pages” was launched on November 7, 2011 to all users. It allows entities which
are not individuals (such as organizations, companies, and publications) to set up profiles, or
pages for the posting and syndication of posts
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Sources of profit
Google plus (Google +) is a social networking site of Google Incorporation, which does not
have any profit making tendency. It is still unclear how it will make any profit. Google Inc. is
personally funding it.
Future plans
Google plus was created to challenge the most popular social networking site Facebook. Although it
has got many special services almost similar to facebook but it was unable to get more attention of
the customers than Facebook. Google Inc. has announced to take major steps for getting more
subscribers by offering better quality services.
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Social networks in Bangladesh
There aren’t many social networks in Bangladesh actually. The ones that do exist don’t have
many users to count as full-fledged social network. The only ones worth their salt are Chatbd,
Faceboi, Velki, bdchat etc. These social networks aren’t focused on making profit actually.
Most of them are made by hobbyists. Recently we are seeing a social network named “aawaj”
that is trying to make its way to the market but it will take time for them to make impression.
Fig-5. Popular Bangladeshi Social Networking Sites
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Impact of Social Networks
This century started its journey with the wild fever of Social Networks and by the looks of
things; it is yet to go away. People are now becoming more and more social than ever. No
matter what they are doing, wherever they are, they always share their thoughts, their ideas
and their whereabouts. People are sharing their photos, their memories and beliefs. Because
of that, in many cases workflow has increased. But the other side of the coin is that it the
world has become more transparent. The world is turning into a glasshouse. This is not
intended but this is what seems to be the outcome of sharing everything with everyone. Our
information are now out there for everyone to see, to use, to manipulate. These social
networks have always tried to protect our privacy and yet, things go out the door when we
face problems. Facebook has been faced with this controversy. The company was unable to
maintain the privacy of the users and got sued by couple of users. Twitter doesn’t maintain
that much privacy at all. What has been shared, its out in the world like toothpaste out of its
tube. In spite all these problems, their popularity and numbers are growing rapidly and show
no signs to back down.
Fig-6. Social Networking Sites make Humans idler than ever
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Conclusion
It doesn’t matter if the world is made of glass or not. It only matters if someone tries to
shatter the glass make everything goes bonkers. Social Networks are here to stay and they
make our lives easier in their own ways. All we can do is make the best hope for the best for
it.
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References
1. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/57933bb8-fcd9-11df-ae2d-00144feab49a.html
2. http://beta.fool.com/apinkasovitch/2012/02/02/analysing-facebooks-financialstatements/1573/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ning_(website)
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
7. http://saybrookmarketing.com/blog/2011/11/who-knew%E2%80%9Cpinning%E2%80%9D-could-be-so-fun-and-so-profitable/
8. http://www.quora.com/Pinterest/How-does-Pinterest-generate-revenue
9. http://ilt5650trend.weebly.com/facebook.html
10. http://www.danah.org/SNSResearch.html
11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
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