October 4th, 2014
‘Without perception for evolution of Media, the era of Facebook would be end’
1. Abstract
As Social media develops, people can enjoy communication easily and conveniently with SNS platform utilities. Facebook is representative Social Network Service (SNS) including Myspace and Twitter. Facebook has more than 70million users all over the world not even from State. As the biggest SNS platform company, Facebook was the typical role model of other SNS platform with many strong points. However, as the technology has been developed, the role of Facebook was faced with challenging. When it comes to Internet of Things (IoT), it was another reason for users to seek other types SNS platforms. Thanks to IoT and its main function of linkage between equipment, people can access to the portal via mobile phone, which means the changes on the paradigm of perception toward IT technology. Also, as the perception about privacy came to be important, the “graph” that Facebook’s algorithm for making personnel connection had necessity to be supplemented. Therefore, this research aims at proving hypothesis about the rapid changes of social trend and perceptions of SNS users, examining how Facebook, the leader of SNS, do its role to react the sensitive users’ needs and development of technology well. In this way, I’m going to insist that Facebook should catch up with the rapidly changed SNS trends. Otherwise, I’ m assure, Facebook will end up with the being collapsed SNS platform, as My Space did just few years ago.
2. Introduction
It took 38 years to Radio has 50million listeners. Then the time became shorter to 13yeras to be popular, when TV had appeared in the market. In this way, it was just 4 years for Internet, 3 years for IPod and just 1 year for Facebook to have their customers. As the time gap became shorter, it is possible to say there would be another type of media soon.
Nowadays some SNS can replace the function of media including TV news. Indeed, the appearance of SNS affect to the world powerfully, showing us the pro-democracy movement in middle-East, outbreaks of Ebola virus in Africa and tsunami in Japan. People in the world can know the issues in timely manners with twitter and Facebook, the SNS media. When it comes to life style, SNS seems to soak into our daily life deeply. Almost everyone in the world, especially the people who work in the urban city, tends to look at their Smart Phone even they are walking in the road to check their SNS. With Smart Phone, the users enjoy chatting to make relationship with people more concretely, which means SNS is acting as the place that can share the feeling, information, experience and knowledge among users.
Since it took just 1 year to SNS became social trend among internet users, as we know, we can expect there should be other types of SNS forms with functionally optimized even within 1 year. However, this changes does not mean the defeating the former one but the enhancing the new technology. Basically the flow of media development always contains the change of paradigm. Marshall McLuhan (1911~1980) explained how to understand the media in this electric world, saying the development of media can stimulate our neuron creatively. Thus, according to him, people can change their perception to media, meaning the change of paradigm. Therefore, the appearance of SNS and IoT can be explained as the change of perception of people not the invention of totally new technology. In this context, we need to look into users mind about how to recognize the function of SNS, especially Facebook. Nowadays, the media is not just acting as message delivery, so as to SNS. My study started in this point. In this study, I’m going to focus on the perception of people toward SNS, and so, how they use their SNS account with friends. In this way, I will prove my hypothesis about Facebook, the beloved SNS, should recognize the change and catch up with the trend.
3. Theoretical Background
3.1 The concept of SNS
Technically, SNS is abbreviation of Social Network Service, meaning platform service for society that people gathered by certain purpose to meet friends and make strong relationship. In this network world, users make more broad personnel connection with SNS. Wikipedia defines SNS as the online platform services that can make personnel connection stronger and broader, having people are thick as friends, coworker and even alumni from same university. Using SNS, Wikipedia adds, they can share information about variety issues and opinions that can make their social network more strongly.
When it comes to studies, the most representative definition about SNS is Boyd & Ellion’s theory (2007). They explained the SNS as the web-based service that let people open their personal information on the certain on-line spaces, show strings of lists that users are connected to, and make the users can see the lists that the other users connected to. Boyd & Ellison argued that basically SNS should have 3 kinds of functions.
According to them, SNS should produce the personnel profile and contents in publically or semipublically one. Also, SNS should have main functions that make personnel network with other users. Lastly, SNS should apply the functions that have users share information of text and images and communicate each other, based on the personnel network. Therefore, these 3 keywords, producing profile & contents, making the relationship, and the communication are crucial concepts of the SNS.
3.2 The characteristic of SNS
Stewart Butterfield (2003) and Matt Webb (2004) categorized about characteristic of SNS on their blogs, saying there are 7 kinds of characteristics in SNS use. They arranged it as the identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputation, and sharing. Followings are more concrete explanations about characteristic of SNS.
3.2 The characteristic of SNS
Stewart Butterfield (2003) and Matt Webb (2004) categorized about characteristic of SNS on their blogs, saying there are 7 kinds of characteristics in SNS use. They arranged it as the identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputation, and sharing. Followings are more concrete explanations about characteristic of SNS.
Gene Smith make this 7 terms with Honeycomb format, influenced by User Experience Honeycomb of Perter Morville. Smith tried to categorize the 3 kinds of SNS model, twitter, Flicker and Digg, with his Honeycomb format, arguing each SNS has its own characteristics not to have 7 of them. For instance, twitter has strong “presence”, but it doesn’t have “groups”. That is, most of SNS have their own uniqueness and target users.
3.3 The Type of SNS
3.3.1 The History of SNS
Thanks to World Wide Web service in 1990s, SNS could have its own ground to be popular among users. With the evolution of technology, supplying personal information on the on-line circumstance came to public in late 1990s. In 2000s, Friendster (2002), My Space (2004), LinkedIn (2003), and Facebook (2004) appeared, showing off their special on-line services. So far, Facebook is the most representative SNS platform. According to Wikipedia research, the market share of Facebook is 55.1% based on visitors in 2011, while twitter is 11.7% and LinkedIn is 6.6%.
3.3.2 My space
My Space started SNS service in 2004. When My Space was introduced to the public for the first time, the number of its page view was more than Facebook‘s. However, on 29th June 2001, News Corporation, the owner of My Space, announced that they sell My Space to the Specific Media at 35million dollars, even though News Corporation had bought My Space at 580million dollars in 2005.
- The collapse of My Space
There are many predictions about why My Space had to be collapsed. The most common answer about collapse is the taking over of News Corporation. According to Businessweek, My Space was pressed to create profits by News Corporation after its taking over. News Corporation only focused on how to make money through advertising earnings. They ignoring the fact that users wants more innovative web-based platform, looking on how to avoid loss their assets. A manager who took charge in marketing of My Space confessed that they were failed to react to the users’ needs (Article: The Huffington Post. 2011. 6. 30). Another reason of collapse was stemmed from the loss of faith of users. My Space did not manage the cyber terrorism, letting hackers be into the My Space Service. There are much more information about porno, phishing and spam message than other SNS is. Even My Space made contract to Google for exclusive advertising with 900millon dollars, and denounced by manipulating the number of clicks. Such kinds of acts that My Space showed, has the users too disappointed to move them into another SNS like Facebook.
3.3.3 Facebook
Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg when he was a student of Harvard University in 2004. The first concept of Facebook was the community site only for students of Harvard. However, as the service was develops, the more university students including Yale and Stanford and other Ivy League could access to the Facebook service. Finally, in late 2005, most of North American students over the age of 13 who have e-mail address can have Facebook account. In the end, Facebook became the most representative SNS platform over My Space, having more than 3000million members in 2009. According to Facebook, 70% of its member is consisted of other countries not the States.
- The Strategy of Facebook
Facebook’s value is to offer a platform that helps users communicate more easily with their friends and co-workers. While the users are sharing contents such as their personal information, images, and U-tubes, Facebook reproduce the contents into the digital map of people’s life or social graph of social connection, providing the opportunity to see new world over the country. Thanks to the Facebook’s mapping facility, it is becoming a more useful tool as make friends and acts as another name card for boasting man power or outstanding careers.
As a powerful social utility, Facebook tried to construct its own connection algorism, called graph. From the beginning, Mark Zuckerberg used the term “graph” as represent the relationship among users. Since September 2011, Facebook refer the system as “Open Graph” to connecting application and website. Through this open graph system, users can share their real life with friends efficiently. Basically open graph offer the service helps users to say stories with non-text contents. For instance, if the user
read a newspaper named “Washington Post” through application, which is tagged in his friends, such information is arranged into Facebook open graph. In addition, the information is tagged as “where he read”, “when he read”, and “what he read”, which is arranged by API that Facebook offer. In this way, his friends can see the full sentence as “Peter read Washington Post in the subway on Monday afternoon.” in the Facebook view page. When it comes to technology, Facebook has some strongpoint. Firstly, it has adopted the application based IT circumstances. Smart phone, one of the most sensational inventions in 21th century, was suggested the change in the SNS service. Unlike My Space, Facebook use the Smart phone based interface more efficiently. Secondly, Facebook has simple UI/UX system that everyone can access to portal page easily. Also, the registration process is not too complicated for users. Thirdly, Facebook
opened its API to the developers. Ultimately, those open policy made the users trust on Facebook firmly. With this technological and physiological and strategies, Facebook has been the most useful and popular SNS among users of 70million.
However, as we looked into the My Space case, Facebook could be in danger to be collapsed. MySpace went through harsh time, partly because they did not care for the users requests of technological evolution, and partly because they did not foresee the threats by competitors like Facebook. Thus, if Facebook overlook the social trends and competitors, it could end up with destroying as My Space did.
Therefore, in the next part, I’m going to suggest hypotheses about why Facebook should tight tensions to keep its SNS kingdom.
4. Research model and hypotheses
4.1 Even though the role of SNS will have been changed, Facebook did not follow the trend. The main concept of Facebook was sharing users’ real life with friends, family and coworkers. On the basis of sharing privacy, users could perform personnel network as well as show off their achievements such as job, social network, education etc. In the view of psychology, the first model of Facebook acted as online PR web-site and entertainment place among users.
However, as the number of users is explosively increasing, the issues about privacy came up to the surface. According to New York Times (14th, December, 2011), young Facebook users tended to dropped out of a service because of the privacy issue. Some users worried about the expose of their real face and personal information. Others are dissatisfied with the Facebook’s too much connected personnel network that makes them feel a sense of alienation. About this privacy issue, TIME (25th, May, 2013), reported a study about how teenagers considered Facebook as SNS platform. It showed
teenagers were aware that contents they post SNS might be analyzed by friends and friends. Thus, 57% of them didn’t decide to upload anything because they guess it might reflect badly on them someday. Actually 1/4 of teenagers used fake name, age, and location to keep their privacy in the SNS. Furthermore, more and more teens tried to find another type of SNS platform that supplement Facebook, esp. twitter. Those two articles suggested that users have been tired of sharing their daily life with someone, seeking out alternative SNS service. Indeed, the amount of users of Facebook was decreased in North America. Followings are the changes in Facebook users.
It seems that uses don’t want to share their life with just Facebook friend. Rather they tends to post social issues or entertainment information, which means Facebook is not the place offering fun and useful moment to users. This can be interpreted that people’s perception toward SNS is moving from sharing life and making friends to sharing knowledge and making fun memories. At least, many users don’t want to expose their privacy to online anymore. Even though people had changed their perception of privacy in SNS, it seems that Facebook did not care for the trend user need. AnimalNewYork.com, the internet media, reported an article about Facebook’s research published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) that covers
study about how Facebook control user’s feeling on newsfeed changes. It says if there were negative contents in newsfeed, the state updates of users contained more negative words than before, and vice versa. This psychological study, aimed at knowing about user’s reaction, was strongly denounced by civic groups and related academic world, even Electronic Privacy Information Center sued Facebook to the Federal Communication Commission. They argue that Facebook did not consider users’ privacy as crucial factors, using 0.7millions of users’ personnel information without notice. Such unethical research by Facebook resulted in loss of loyalties from users. Facebook was not only overlooked trends that people are seeking the portal without exposing of privacy, but also ignored the needs that online space should be safe from unethical accidents, so My Space did just few years ago. The decrease of Facebook users in North America, I think, prove the first hypotheses that Facebook does not catch out the current trends.
4.2 The lifespan of SNS is similar to each other, and Facebook will lose its users as the former SNS platform did. Princeton University released a study that Facebook will lose 80% of users by 2017. It forecasts Facebook is already in the peak of its golden age, as My Space was. Back to 2009, My Space was the most popular and representative SNS platform in those days. However, My Space started to lose users rapidly, handing over its throne to Facebook. Princeton explained the aspects by google query pattern.
According to the research, search query pattern between Myspace and Facebook was similar to each other.
In fact, Facebook showed the similar footsteps as My Space did. Aside from this SIR model research; Facebook is focusing on advertising to earn profit which is not to adapt what the users really needs. In the first hypothesis, we prove the fact that Facebook did not care for the users’ requests not to expose privacy too much and make some place to share social issues. Rather Facebook tries to look on the commercial advertisement using people’s privacy and their personnel connections. Let’s think about the new technology of Facebook. Facebook developed the new algorism named open graph that shows the users real life without text writing. The main reason of this open graph system is advertising. Once the users do something via mobile phone to use application, all of the information about place, product and even price that the user has experienced would be open to the public as the product of “the happiest moment”. Such kinds of experiences made by users can be the most attractive product when it tagged and shared in the Facebook. Therefore, the new open graph cannot but business strategy to attract more sponsors not the users. In the end, Facebook’s reaction about change should be the exact same thing what the My Space did. Then what should Facebook do not to follow the former SNS platform? The fatal mistake that My Space did was overlooking the social trend and the rising of competitors. At that time, My Space
recognized the user’s needs to show off themselves but did not catch up with the trend that users wanted to share their real life with family and friends, also, to make as many as friends in the cyber space. For the young people in the early 2000s, to share life through SNS was a new type of culture of entertainment. Unlike former generations who enjoyed TV show and internet chatting, this young generation found new kind of playing with fun and interesting. My Space should have known this trend. In the same context, Facebook also has assignment to see the trend sensitively. It seems that people are looking on another type of SNS service, and the change will be processed rapidly. The other SNS platform twitter (2006) and Pinterest (2010) would be another option that can supplement the former SNS like Facebook. Basically, both twitter and Pinterest supply other kinds of platform service. In the case of twitter, it reflects the user’s needs to express their opinions about social issue not the privacy one. With short terms, only 140 words twitter delivery issue people to people quickly. Because users can talk about social issue with followers who even are not my friends or family, the conversation is
made more freely and rapidly. That is, another type of SNS model was made.
Pinterest is elaborated version of Facebook. It is more specialized in gathering images users like. In the Pinterest, users can pick a certain images and arrange them to post like a curator in the art gallery. The basic idea of Pinterest is collecting everything to show off to the people. If the Facebook share the everyday life, the Pinterest shares the hobbies, interest, and fun memories. Thus, image language is another form of expression that users want to appeal themselves. Pinterest ranked at 3rd position in 2012 as the visitor was increased rapidly. Pinterest is received attention as the next representative SNS
platform that covers new trends to people request. Thus, Facebook should give attention the concept of Pinterest. On the next part, I’m going to compare two SNS platforms on the basis of their characteristic.
5. Discussion
5.1 The growth of Pinterest
Pinterest increased its visitors in short time. Within less than a year, visitors who want to be a member of Pinterest were increasing rapidly. That growth of Pinterest suggests that it is showing similar aspect of the former SNS platforms including My Space and acebook when they were popular among users in their early days. In this context, it is possible to say Pinterest knew how to reflect the users’ needs and how to deal with the new social trends. Basically, Pinterest induces users to access other platforms like twitter and Facebook. This, in other words, Facebook should make efforts to look on the growth of Pinterest and see how it is reacting to the social trends not to just focus on advertising in web portal to gain profits. Paradigm was changed.
5.2 Pinterest vs. Facebook
One of the big differences between Facebook and Pinterest is ‘anonymity’. Facebook is leaning on the mapping algorism to show off user’s privacy and share it with friends. On the other hand, Pinterest is offering more anonymity-oriented service to users, making users feel they are safe and protected from analyzing and evaluating of others. This anonymity can help users do their post more creatively. Unlike Facebook, no one can know “who” bought a certain products and “who” posted these images in Pinterest.
In the seminar held on Seoul National University of UX Lab (2014), this term was referred as “Social interaction”. It says, even though the acts including “pin” and “re-pin” is reveal to other users, basically Pinterest is considered as more personal place for users, leading them into more free and creative posting life. Accordingly, Pinterest already know the trends that people don’t want expose my privacy to the
public anymore.
The other difference is resulted from the development technology. Since smart phone, created by Apple, has been released to the world, almost of media and IT service should concentrate on how to follow that trends. For that reason, there were some developments in web-based circumstances to supply services via mobile phone. In this circumstance, Pinterest has offered idealized mobile-based services to users, including more sensitive UX/UI for mobile and well performed systems without bugs in
loading. In case of Facebook, it seems that it is offering not that much kind mobile service to users, which includes lots of bugs in loading and inconvenient page form for scrolling down. Since it was originated in web-based circumstance, I guess, UX/UI was idealized in web portal one. Even though Facebook have tried an effort to adopt the mobile environment, this effort, to make open graph for linkage between application and web platform, is more business oriented one especially for the advertising not the technological improvement. Thus, when it comes to technology, Facebook should
more keen eye on the mobile world.
5.3 SNS model in the Future generation
Then the last question about SNS came to us. What will be next generation in SNS model? Roughly speaking, there are possibilities to appear another version of My Space, Facebook, and Pinterest. Otherwise, there will be another invention totally different from former one, for instance, linkage system between mobile phone and home appliances. “LG Home Chat” could be another type of SNS service. In this technology, a SNS platform serviced by Korean web portal Naver, or Line, can link into the
home appliances like refrigerator and the user can recognize information about how many stuffs are left in the my refrigerator, when the food will be rotten and so on. That is, the users are always ready to accept new type of technology and new kind of innovative ideas.
6. Conclusion
From the beginning, we have watched how fast the development of technology is and how sensitively the users of SNS is influenced by developed circumstances. It took just 13 years to SNS take over the Web 2.0 internet world. Even in that short period, SNS platforms including My Space, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest were showed up with strong impressions and faded away with rapid speed. Their collapse was stemmed from the rack of understanding about rapidly changing social trend, technology and user’s needs. The users way too much recognize of the change of paradigm. They were stimulated by new innovative technology, esp. IoT, requesting more and more innovative SNS based utilities with fun and convenience. Also, thanks to the linkage system, most of the SNS media affect to each other, meaning other kind of evolution. Pinterest is one of the examples of that theory in its linkage system with IoT as well as other SNS platform Facebook and twitter. In this way, SNS can act as an object for duplicating and creating even SNS itself, which means there is no immortal king in this jungle-like SNS world. In this research, we prove the hypothesis that the SNS is in evolution and Facebook, the biggest SNS platform, should catch up with the evolution. Otherwise, Facebook will be collapsed as My Space did just few years ago. Science is changed. Media is changed. The perception of people is changed. Why not be SNS?
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