A few weeks ago I started on a series of posts looking at different aspects of social networking tools in the collegiate world…and then school happened so I’ve been a bit behind, but I’m back to pick up the pace…

As you read blogs, papers, comments, etc about the rise of online social networking it becomes pretty evident that there are two camps of thought:
1) The people who think that social networking is destroying inter-personal relationships by replacing face-to-face interaction with facebook messages and MySpace bulletins.
2) Those people who think that as more people interact online, it brings them closer together in real life. You can encounter someone online through a mutual friend or an online group, interact with them via blogging, facebook, twitter, etc, meet them in real life and feel like you’ve already known them for years. Or you can simply learn more about the people you already know (without the awkward conversations some details might require)

While I am not about to claim to be an expert or have hard data to back me up, given my own experiences, I’d say that those in the first camp are off the reservation…but maybe I’m just a social media addict. Anyhow, if you look just at the collegiate world, it is easy to see the massive effects that social media has had; specifically facebook and YouTube.

While other social networking tools are used by some college students, if you asked any random student on a campus if they prefer MySpace or facebook, I would stake a fair sum of my life savings that they will tell you that MySpace is creepy and facebook is where they live online.

Many students (at least undergraduates) can’t even remember the days before facebook…and most have forgotten what life was like when facebook was still in its infancy: only available at a few dozen schools, you couldn’t upload photo albums, the ‘Wall’ was freely editable text box open for anyone to trifle with, and there was no News Feed. I sort of feel like my grandfather telling war stories anytime I start talking about the days of yore when us upperclassmen had to pioneer the trails of facebook’s Wild West.

Since that time, facebook has grown to be an integral part of nearly every student’s life; it may be open for the general public, but students still feel segmented from the rest of the ‘herd’ because their networks remain independent of each other. It is integral for a number of reasons: it has changed the way we interact with each other on a daily basis, it has made it easier to stay up-to-date with friends that you might otherwise have lost contact with, and it has made it easier to share content that previously would have required an exchange of physical media.

Daily Interaction:

If there is a quick comment to make to a friend that doesn’t warrant a phone call and isn’t quite email length, what do you do? Well, before facebook, you likely forgot it…but now, you can just make a quick wall post and get a good chuckle from your random thought. Facebook events have allowed for people to spread the word about just about anything they might want to coordinate between groups of people, messages have steadily eaten away at the number f emails students send on a daily basis, and pokes…well, most people still aren’t sure what those are for.

Everyone has a few things they do every time they get online: I check my Google Reader, facebook, Gmail, Wordpress Stats, and Google News. Most people don’t have that many automatic actions, but everyone has a few. For nearly all college students, the first two things they do online are check facebook, then check email…usually in that order.

Keeping up with the News:

Thanks to the News Feed, people can keep track of what is happening in their social graph without having to check each friend’s profile on a daily basis. Despite its rocky roll-out, this feature has become an integral part of keeping one’s finger on the pulse of your network of friends; it is eerie how fast word travels when someone’s relationship status changes or when someone adds a section to their About Me section that raises eyebrows.

Frequently when you run into an old friend, they will start giving you tidbits about their life, and your response will be ‘Oh yeah, I saw that in facebook.’…thus is the changing face of our social interaction. The only major pitfall that remains in the News Feed is users’ lack of control. You can edit your privacy settings for whole sections of events (ex: ‘Don’t publish stories when I update my Quotes, add a friend, or write on a wall.’) but there is no case-by case management available. It should be that when a user deletes an event from their profile-based Mini Feed, that it is automatically removed from the news Feed as well…but this is not the case today.

Sharing:

Other sites such as del.icio.us, flickr, YouTube and ma.gnolia let you share online content, but facebook allows you to all types of content on one site. Through posting items, uploading photos, writing notes, and posting videos, facebook allows you to centralize all your shared items on a single site and eliminate the need for students to exchange any sort of physical media. No one says “Hey, can you burn me a disc of those pictures?”…it has become “Hey, get those up on facebook, so I can get them too!”

I personally use del.icio.us and flickr because I they are more open and can be imported to other sites via widgets or plugins (something facebook is going to have to adopt, but that is a whole other post), but because of the facebook platform, I can still share my content on my profile page. With other widgets from Zoho and Box.net, you can even share files with your friends without ever opening your email.

These are just a few of the big ways that facebook has effected social interaction in the collegiate world, though I would venture to say that similar results are occurring in most other demographics as well. All of these have strengthened students’ interpersonal relationships, which places me squarely in the 2nd camp…

Other reading on the sociological aspects of social networking: check out this post from Brian Solis