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The Features of Online Social Networking

Second in an ongoing series by Philip Nicholson

This is Philip Nicholson writing again, glad to have you back for another installment in my series of guest blog entries about online social networking.

Last time we talked about the overall picture of online social networking for teens and how it's a big part of the way teens use the Internet today. Now let's move on to the actual meat and bones of these social networking sites ... the features. What makes them so popular?

I talked about how one use of these sites is for teens to share their media, their content. MySpace is peppered with content. Quantity over quality abounds. Yet, it works. The more content that is delivered -- it doesn't have to be prize-winning -- the more traffic comes to the user who is creating the content. It's the same idea that makes blogs and RSS feeds such valuable tools for increasing online visibility. Now, I'm not trying to tell all of you with media-oriented businesses to release a couple of camera-phone clips of your dog at home to gather an instant teenage audience, because the real issue is about contributing to the community. Though it isn't stated on the front page of any of these sites, those who give to the community get back from the community. If you take enough time to share your content with the social network of teens, they'll take enough time to look and give feedback. It's a simple concept but one I think is overlooked when we pass off these sites as playgrounds instead of actual communities.

I talk about MySpace so often that you might think it's the only example out there of a site which uses content creation based in a community to gather traffic. Not the case. YouTube, a popular video sharing community, has seen a huge increase in traffic from the teenage crowd. Again, content is king. If you look around the site, you'll find that the most active users are often the ones who get the most feedback and attention. Just like society outside of the Internet, it's all about being visible. Though it's less community-driven, another candidate for seeing how this teen content mindset works is the music-sharing site PureVolume.

Back to the popular features of online social networking. While self-created content shows us how these sites can reflect the business world, there's also a very personal aspect: Users communicate through these sites. Through comments on a user's page, private messages, chat channels ... whatever the medium may be ... a LOT of communication goes on daily at these sites. Here's an interesting article on MySpace member counts. Three days ago, the site had 77,014,663 members. Now imagine that half of those people participated in one piece of communication on the site daily, be it posting a comment, sending a private message, posting a community bulletin ... whatever. That's roughly 40 million pieces of communication a day, and I wager that the actual number is higher. I polled ten teens with MySpace accounts and found that most communicated 4-6 times a day on the site.

It's sad that there is so much negative media attention surrounding teen online communication, because there is so much positive that takes place here. I'm going to see if I can line up an interview on this topic (negative media attention to the communication that takes place in online social networking sites) with some other concerned teens. We'll see about getting that posted.

I have a lot more to say on these topics and all things related to online social networking for teens. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have a question or would like to hear more about this topic. Otherwise, I'll see you Monday with my next entry.

Thanks for reading,

Philip