Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites (SNSs) are virtual communities where users can create individual public profiles, interact with real-life friends, and meet other people based on shared interests.

From: Behavioral Addictions , 2014

Social Networking Sites

R. Watermeyer , in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Second Edition), 2012

Introduction

Social networking sites (SNS) are a way for people in the offline world to stay connected regardless of geographical distance, difference in time, or other context-specific barriers. They are spaces of socialization for common communities, communities in practice, or those united by a shared interest. They have gained global popularity as a medium through which people transmit, coordinate, and, in some cases, live their lives. Powered by Web 2.0 technology, SNS are explicitly participatory, dialogical, and user-content fed. Sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are dissemination portals, showcasing in vivid multimedia ways expressions of everyday life that invite comment and discussion. They offer a continuously updating diary or inventory of the self. SNS are both product and part of an age of globalization and are at once a powerful example of social and economic interconnectivity and democratic empowerment; an unparalleled information resource and educational tool; a mechanism for identity work and cultural enterprise; and also a barometer of local, national, and international inequality and medium for illicit, criminal, and terrorist behavior.

SNS are increasingly deployed, albeit unintentionally, not only as a platform for computer-mediated communication but also as a substitute for face-to-face forms of social interaction. SNS interactions are characterized by an ease and immediacy, often nonreplicable in the offline world. Unfettered by the constraints of physical proximity, geographical setting, or time zone, SNS allow for mobile, instant, and continuous exchange. However, at the same time as they bring together, SNS may be accused of setting apart. Critics argue that SNS engender overreliability in forms of impersonal communication that reduce person-to-person physical contact and cause the deterioration of core communicative skills. This is further compounded by an overreliance on communicative technologies, particularly audiovisual interfaces that replace core skills of articulation, deliberation, and critical reasoning. Furthermore, SNS may dilute a command or incentive for creative and imaginative forms of interpersonal expression. From an epistemological perspective, it is argued that SNS enervate the potential for independent and autonomous knowledge building and the diminution of attention and concentration spans. Some critics attribute physiological changes, increased incidence of illness, and premature mortality to prolonged or excessive exposure to SNS. Although SNS are hugely popular and continuously used, they are not wholly insulated from a range of ethical issues. The promissory rhetoric that accompanies SNS as a constituent of the Web 2.0 revolution distracts from the very real and omnipresent dangers of its use and/or misapplication.

The global proliferation of SNS and SNS users (SNSers) – with highly variegated applications in multiple potential contexts – has induced an often uncritical and blind-sided acceptance and normalization of SNS as a feature or accessory of everyday life. Such is the ubiquity and integrality of the SNS to social life that it has become almost indispensable and, for the 'Net Generation,' a lifestyle essential. However, while exploiting the multiple attributes and conveniences of SNS, individual users and user communities may become so immersed and convinced of the online environment as to unsuspect the safety of domain infrastructure and legitimacy of information migration to other unidentified domains for unknown users. The capacity of SNS as bridging or reconciliatory devices between geographically disparate or chronologically forgotten individuals/communities epitomized by instant and efficient connectivity and the promise of global coalescence is certainly appealing. Moreover, in cultural–commercial terms, and in an age of lifestyle marketing, the SNS is a liberatory tool, emancipating individuals through open and relatively unregulated dialogue.

However, the SNSer may occupy the online domain much like a homeowner who purchases a property without a survey or certification of its structural integrity. Too many, too often, are guilty of signing a contract without consulting or verifying its conditions. By bypassing the small print of contractual obligations, the user relinquishes many of his or her powers of ownership and governance in the public dissemination and use of personal information, albeit personal information broadcast by the user of his or her own volition in an open and relatively unsecure space. It seems that SNSers display only a limited cognizance or else are unconcerned about the risk associations of SNS use. SNS use is thus simply conceptualized and nonchalantly bought into as a means for personal expression within an environment deemed to be consequence free. Few, then, would reckon upon the ways or even the possibility that their personal information might be co-opted for a variety of purposes beyond their control or wishes and by a variety of unknown agencies. Ultimately, the SNSer may unwittingly supersede his or her claims of information privacy, certainly of the sort that conflicts with personal interests or corrupts accounts of self. The great depth and spread of online networks also means that tracing or mapping the journeys and uses of personal information becomes near impossible. Aspects of self therefore are potentially lost to individual subjectivity. Furthermore, personal information may pass through so many intermediaries or knowledge brokers as to render its final iteration inconsistent and/or incomparable to its first.

Issues of self-presentation or at least the mutability of individuals' online profiles are especially relevant given the high demand for visual content. Of course, online profiles may evolve into exaggerated or fictionalized versions of the offline self. The way with which SNSers exploit the creative license granted by SNS in generating – with good intention or innocence – superlative, alternative, or imaginary depictions of self is itself problematic where the creation of online personalities or avatars is done not innocently, playfully, or with good intention but malignantly, to the detriment or harm of others or even in ways unlawful.

The extent to which private and public realms conflate is perhaps the greatest cause for concern, particularly in the context of an information or network society.

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Social Networking Addiction

Mark D. Griffiths , ... Zsolt Demetrovics , in Behavioral Addictions, 2014

Abstract

Social networking sites (SNSs) are virtual communities where users can create individual public profiles, interact with real-life friends, and meet other people based on shared interests. Anecdotal case study evidence suggests that "addiction" to social networks on the Internet may be a potential mental health problem for some users. However, the contemporary scientific literature addressing the addictive qualities of social networks on the Internet is relatively scarce. This chapter provides empirical and conceptual insight into the emerging phenomenon of addiction to SNSs by examining motivations for SNS usage, examining negative consequences of SNS usage, and exploring potential SNS addiction. The chapter also examines screening and assessment tools, and suggests tentative treatment approaches based on the treatment of other online addictions.

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Social Media and Health Behavior Change

L. Laranjo , in Participatory Health Through Social Media, 2016

6.4.2.2 Use of Social Networking Sites in Promoting Health Behavior Change

SNSs [57] are now a global phenomenon. As of September 2013, 73% of online adults were using an SNS of some kind and 42% were using more than one [80,81]. Facebook is the most popular platform (with more than 1.19 billion monthly active users [82]), followed by Twitter (500 million users worldwide [83]). In parallel to general-purpose SNSs like Facebook and Twitter, health-specific SNSs are also emerging [84,85]. Some are oriented towards patients with a specific chronic condition (e.g., TuDiabetes [86,87]), others are more general and designed for patients with any chronic condition (e.g., PatientsLikeMe [88,89]), and a few others target people wanting to change a particular health risk behavior or improve their lifestyle (e.g., smoking cessation [90]).

The application of SNSs in the health domain shows tremendous potential both at the population and individual levels [91]. At the population level, they are currently being used for public health surveillance [92] for communicable [92,93] and noncommunicable diseases [86,87]. At the individual level, they are able to facilitate access to health-related information [94–97] and social support [56,90], promoting better-informed treatment decisions [88,89].

Given that lifestyle behaviors are nowadays responsible for the global burden of noncommunicable diseases [1], growing attention is focusing on how to use SNSs to counteract this trend [60,98]. Interestingly, studies of offline social networks have demonstrated the actual role of social influence in spreading certain risk behaviors such as in the case of alcohol consumption [99], smoking [59], and obesity [58].

Research efforts are now focusing on how to leverage social influence to promote healthy behaviors. The fact that SNSs are widely accessible across geographical barriers, and that they are increasingly being used by people on a daily basis (namely through mobile phones), turn them into especially interesting loci for public health interventions in the behavioral domain.

Recently, a published meta-analysis evaluating the effectiveness of SNSs in changing health behavior outcomes found a statistically significant positive effect of SNS interventions on behavior change, boosting encouragement for future research in this area (Fig. 6.2) [100].

Figure 6.2. Forest plot of effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals representing the effect of interventions with social networking sites on health behavior-related outcomes (random effects model).

 Source: Reproduced with permission from Laranjo L, Arguel A, Neves AL, Gallagher AM, Kaplan R, Mortimer N, et al. The influence of social networking sites on health behavior change: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2015;22(1):243–56.

The results of this meta-analysis are in line with what has been shown for Interactive Health Communication Applications (IHCAs), where a positive effect on behavioral outcomes was found in a Cochrane meta-analysis [36]. IHCAs are comparable to SNS interventions in that the former are computer-based (usually web-based) systems combining health information with either social support, decision support, or behavior change support, and the latter tend to provide education, social support, and self-management support [100]. The combination of these functions has also been previously described as being commonly used in other social media interventions [72].

Finally, other systematic reviews have been published evaluating the effect of social media (e.g., blogs, discussion boards, wikis) on health behavior change [72], health promotion [73], and health communication [74], showing feasibility but no definitive conclusion regarding effectiveness.

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The Past

Kim Holmberg , in Altmetrics for Information Professionals, 2016

Social networking sites have become important for discovering new research ideas and for sharing research. Rowlands, Nicholas, Russell, Canty, and Watkinson (2011) showed that although there were some disciplinary differences, researchers use tools such as wikis for collaborative authoring, instant messaging to discuss with colleagues, and other tools to share files, images, and documents. Weller (2011, p. 55) writes that "research is at the core of what it means to be a scholar, and issues around quality and reliability are essential in maintaining the status and reputation of universities. A cautious approach is therefore not surprising as researchers seek to understand where the potential of these new tools can enhance their practice, while simultaneously maintaining the key characteristics of quality research." Although researchers have a positive attitude towards using the web and social media in their scientific communication in general (Ponte & Simon, 2011), there are still unanswered questions about the benefits with such tools and about how to embed reliable mechanisms for quality control into open dissemination of scientific knowledge online. This concern is perhaps more valid today than ever before, as reports of so-called predatory journals publishing fake, incoherent "scientific" articles roll in (e.g., Bohannon, 2013; Raju, 2013; Bartholomew, 2014; Jones & McCullough, 2014). At the time of writing Beall's list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" contains 680 journals. 1 These predatory journals approach researchers and invite them to publish in the journal against a fee. As totally incoherent papers, for instance written by characters from the TV series The Simpsons, get accepted and published, 2 questions about quality of peer review are raised. The actions of these predatory journals are undermining the credibility of every science publisher and casting a shadow of doubt even on legitimate open access publishers.

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The librarian as advocate

Dee Ann Allison , in The Patron-Driven Library, 2013

Marketing through social media

Social networking sites can serve as a foundation for a marketing campaign. Most libraries are attempting to use Facebook as a marketing tool but not all are effective. Jacobson (2011) conducted a study of library Facebook pages but found it difficult to select candidates for the study because many sites hadn't been updated in six months, and, among the sites studied, many lacked evidence of engagement from fans. If a library has a Facebook page or any other media site that can't be maintained it should be removed. For libraries with the level of staffing necessary to manage a site, social media has much potential for creating opportunities for patron engagement.

As of June 2012, the Library of Congress Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/libraryofcongress/likes ) lists 70,114 "likes," 1945 "talking about this" and 8726 "were here" statistics. When a Facebook user looks at the page it lists all of that Facebook user's friends that have liked that page. On Twitter, the Library of Congress ( https://twitter. com/#!/librarycongress ) has over 390,000 users. The numbers are similar for the British Library (https://twitter.com/#!/britishlibrary ) which has nearly 300,000 followers with 2432 tweets (June 2012) and a Facebook page ( http://www. facebook.com/britishlibrary ) with 48,675 "likes," 1414 "talking about this" and 16,490 "were here." Most libraries will not come close to these numbers, but a coordinated program using social media can increase participation in library programs and services, and, more importantly, build a loyal following of supporters.

All social media activity should direct users through the library website and not launch patrons to sites outside the library. When a link goes to a library resource, that resource should have identifiable branding so that users understand it is part of the library system. Facebook and blog pages should be regularly updated; there should be no reason to land on a page with the same information as appeared on it a week or a month ago. There is much competition for people's attention so information must be useful or interesting. Libraries with lively sites and interesting content are most likely to build engaged followings.

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A focus on readers

Dee Ann Allison , in The Patron-Driven Library, 2013

Social networking sites

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have a place in library services because they are familiar to many patrons. Twitter can be effective in promoting activities and programs that are occurring in the library ( Krabill, 2009) and Facebook has been used by libraries and librarians alike as a means to connect with users.

Individuals create a Facebook profile, which is different to the Facebook pages used by libraries and other organizations. Profiles allow individuals to request and manage friends but are not intended to be used for professional advertising. Librarians should not "sell" products or use a profile for commercial purposes. This does not preclude librarians using Facebook to communicate with patrons, but it is important that personal posts from friends and family are kept off any profile being used to communicate with patrons.

Libraries which create pages are easier to manage because friend requests are automatically accepted. A Facebook page for a library is owned by a legitimate representative of the library for the purpose of communicating with fans. There is no access to fan profiles, but page updates are sent automatically to all fans. Pages allow libraries to establish roles for managing the site, which include: the administrator, content creators, a monitor (who manages the daily routine of watching for comments and responding), and someone to create advertisements and manage the insight analytics that provide metrics on pages. The ability to create polls is another feature available for pages, and libraries can use these to engage users.

Facebook also supports the creation of groups for communication between people who share common interests. These are being used to organize people into groups, and to share information, photos or event information. They can be public or private, and updates are transmitted automatically to members.

The ability to interconnect social media also makes it easier to coordinate communication. Social media dashboards provide management services for connecting multiple networking sites, and provide analytics on use. HootSuite ( http://hootsuite.com/ ) has a basic plan at no cost. These services provide a way to keep sites organized, which is important because librarians will have separate personal and professional sites. It is also possible to connect sites in such a way that an addition to one site is automatically added to other sites. For example, a video can be posted to YouTube, and automatically added to Facebook, and is then distributed to all followers. Other useful tools include the URL shortening websites that shorten long URLs. Tiny ( http://tiny.cc/ ), bitly ( https://bitly.com/ ) and Ow.ly ( http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url ) are services which shorten URLs to more user-friendly sizes, which is helpful for tweets and posting to social media sites.

Virtual Interest Groups (VIGs) use social media to create groups based on interests for the purpose of collaboration. LinkedIn ( http://www.linkedin.com/ ) is an example of a social media site that facilitates the development of interest groups. There are other ways to create groups including using blogs, which is what two hospitals in Calgary, Canada, did to provide training, information consultation and consultations between researchers and librarians (Lin and Kathryn, 2012). In addition to blogs, the librarians used chat and Delicious ( http://www.delicious.com ) to answer questions and share information. Participants reported less fear about using social media tools, and noted that they found blog posts to be most helpful.

HASTAC ( http://hastac.org/ ) is another network for individuals and institutions to provide learning and collaboration through networked research that bridges the disciplines of humanism and technology. This group is particularly useful for academic librarians working to create new digital information.

Diaspora ( https://joindiaspora.com/ ) is a private, open source social network. Diaspora was developed to address privacy concerns related to social networks like Facebook. Users establish their own server to host content, and these servers or pods can then interact with each other to share social information. By creating a private network of sites, people have more control over access to their information than on other social sites that frequently have defaults for more open access.

Social media must be updated on a regular schedule, and the information should be interesting and worth reading, otherwise patrons will not sign up. A 2011 survey of the ARL provides some discouraging results (Wan, 2011). While over 90 percent of the libraries had Facebook pages, 35.8 percent had fewer than 200 fans, and 19.5 percent hadn't updated the page in the month of the study. These statistics imply that ARL libraries do not have a clear direction, or much enthusiasm for their pages, which may explain why they have so few fans.

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Overuse of Social Networking

Enrique Echeburúa , in Principles of Addiction, 2013

Introduction

A social networking site is an online place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him/her to other users. The social networking phenomenon has spread rapidly all over the world. Many Internet users have set up their own profile on social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace). Facebook, one of the main social networking sites, has over 500 million active users, with an additional 200 000 signing up each day. Facebook users visit the site on average two times a day and spend an average of 20  min per visit on the site. People online form relationships and social groups that provide emotional support and a sense of belonging. These groups can form intricate methods of communication, requirements for membership, and sets of standards and codes of conduct for their members.

One-third (35%) of American adult Internet users have a profile on an online social network site, 4 times more than 3 years ago, but still much lower than the 65% of online American teens who use social networks. Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with 75% of adults aged 18–24 using these networks, compared to just 7% of adults aged 65 and older. Overall, adults tend to use social networks for personal reasons rather than professional. Despite comparatively lower levels of social network use, usage of social network sites by adults has increased markedly over the past 5 years. Demographics of social network users are shown in Table 92.1.

TABLE 92.1. Demographics of Social Network Users

The percentage of online Americans in each demographic category who have a profile on a social network website:
All adults 35%
Sex
Men 35
Women 35
Age
18–24 75 ∗
25–34 57 ∗
35–44 30 ∗
45–54 19 ∗
55–64 10
65+ 7
Race
White, non-Hispanic 31 ∗
Black, non-Hispanic 43
Hispanic 48
Annual Household Income
Less than $30 000 45 ∗
$30 000–$49 999 38
$50 000–$74 999 30
$75 000+ 31
Education
Less than HS 43
HS grade 31
Some college 41 ∗
College grade 33
Locale
Urban 34 ∗
Suburban 26
Rural 23
∗
These groups are significantly different from the other groups in the section.

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey December 2008 Survey, n  =   2253, with an n of 1650 Internet users. For Internet users the margin of error is ±3%.

For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends. The question is if they are simply an easy way to be in close contact with acquaintances and friends or they are potentially addictive.

Despite the fact that the minimum age for most major social networking sites is usually 14 years, it is estimated that over a quarter of underage children have a profile on a social networking site because younger users often lie about their age when signing up for the website. However, content-generated risks from this new leisure activity have not been investigated in any detail.

Social networking websites allow teenagers to socialize and make friends with people they ordinarily would not approach and help shy people have an outlet for self-expression. They can write down their thoughts, add pictures of themselves, post messages for other people to read, and compile lists of their favorite interests. Users can design their personal homepages, adding different photographs, songs and even videos that can be played on the website alongside their personal information. Members can also link their profiles to those of other members and accumulate hundreds, even thousands, of online "friends," some of them from school or another social setting and some others whom they have never actually spoken to or met face-to-face.

All pleasurable behaviors can change our mood and consciousness and modify the brain chemistry. If they are used on a regular basis, they can negatively impact aspects of life functioning. The possibility of the user becoming addicted to the Internet increases tremendously due to the rewards given by accessing these networking sites. Socializing and dating on the net has become very popular recently.

That is, all addictive behaviors begin simply as pleasurable activities, which also serve to distract, connect to other friends and numb people from emotional discomfort. The problem is that what begins as a solution to social inhibition or to emotional trouble often produces secondary alterations in life functioning.

In sum, digital technologies are psychoactive and can alter mood states. Addictions of any type can be an exit or coping symptom of other ongoing wounds in the family or intrapersonal situation, so they may be amplifiers and sensitizers of previous problems.

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The Present

Kim Holmberg , in Altmetrics for Information Professionals, 2016

10.2.3 Social networking sites

ResearchGate (http://www.researchgate.net/) is an academic social networking site where researchers can share research papers and discover papers that they may find interesting, connect with peers, discuss research, and, of course, create their own profile pages, which include an RG Score that reflects the impact the researcher has had. ResearchGate reports to have over 6 million members, but some of these accounts may be automatically created by scraping the web to find scholars and setting up profile pages automatically for them (Van Noorden, 2014b).

From an altmetrics point of view, the data that could be collected from ResearchGate includes the number of publications (as listed on a researcher's profile page), impact points (which is a cumulative count of journal impact factors (JIFs) of the publications of a researcher), number of downloads (from a researcher's profile page), views (number of times a researcher's profile has been viewed), and the so-called RG Score, which presumable in addition to the above-mentioned metrics, also includes some statistics of the researcher's activity on the site. This means that researchers that actively participate in the conversations on ResearchGate or frequently answer questions that others have posted on the site would have an advantage over less active researchers. A more fundamental problem with the RG Score is that it partly uses the JIFs for exactly the purpose that the impact factors are mostly criticized for, i.e., to evaluate the impact of individual articles and researchers. How the different metrics are weighted is not clear either. The RG Score is also aggregated to the institutional level by ResearchGate, allowing altmetrics investigations to be carried out on universities and countries even.

Thelwall and Kousha (in press) used the institutional RG Scores on ResearchGate to investigate whether they could reflect traditional institutional impact or attention. They examined this by comparing the RG Scores with different university rankings. Their findings showed that institutional rankings on ResearchGate do correlate moderately with university rankings, suggesting that the activities and usage of ResearchGate "broadly reflects traditional academic capital," but the causation for the moderate correlation is unclear. Holmberg (in press) came to similar conclusions in a small case study analyzing the institutional RG Scores and university rankings of 14 universities in Finland. He also compared the RG Scores to other descriptive statistics of the universities' performance and output, such as number of PhDs awarded, faculty person-years, research funding, and number of publications. The RG Score correlated well with all the descriptive measures; the correlation between the number of publications and the RG Score (Figure 10.2) being almost perfect (0.969 with Spearman rank correlation, significant at the 0.05 level). It has to be emphasized that the way the RG Score is calculated goes against everything that we currently know about JIFs, as JIFs should not be used to assess or rank individual articles or researchers. Thus, the strong correlation between research output and the RG Scores in Figure 10.2 may give the wrong impression that the RG Score is in some way a good indicator. It is more likely that the correlation in this case can be explained with size of the investigated units; this was, however, not tested for.

Figure 10.2. Correlation between the RG Score (from ResearchGate) and the number of peer-reviewed publications in 2012 at the Finnish universities (0.969 Spearman).

With the "bigger" universities also being "bigger" on ResearchGate, the results would suggest that the volume of uptake and activity of usage of ResearchGate roughly follows that of the rankings between universities themselves. But these findings also hint at the possible value of ResearchGate for institutional altmetrics or country-level altmetrics, areas of which neither are so far extensively studied. As only some evidence exists that altmetrics could potentially work even on a country level (Alhoori, Furuta, Tabet, Samaka, & Fox, 2014), investigating the RG Score for that purpose might prove to be a fruitful direction.

An interesting question that comes to mind about the RG Score is whether researchers in general understand what the RG Score exactly indicates and how it is calculated, or is it for them merely a fun fact or a curiosity, an interesting score to compare with colleagues? A researcher of course knows her colleagues and has some idea of their productivity and impact, and with this they also understand the context for the different indicators. Therefore different altmetrics, such as the RG Score, may make most sense for the individual researcher who understands the full context of it. Then when comparing her score to those of colleagues, the researcher would gain some knowledge about how she is performing relative to the other researchers.

Another academic social networking site, Academia.edu (http://www.academia.edu/), reports that over 17 million academics have signed up for their service and that they have added almost 5 million scientific papers to their accounts. Again, some of these accounts may be automatically created by, for instance, scraping university websites and generating profile pages from the information found. Academia.edu states that it is a platform to share research papers and that their mission is to "accelerate the world's research." 8 Academia.edu has not yet been as extensively studied as some of the other social media sites, but some results already suggest that the online impact of researchers on the platform is not connected to their offline impact (Thelwall & Kousha, 2014). Thelwall and Kousha (2014) also report some evidence of gender differences between the users of Academia.edu. The discovered differences between Academia.edu and ResearchGate could be due to differences between the users (e.g., from different disciplines) of the two sites, or differences in how the sites are being used, in which case the two sites might reflect different aspects of scholarly communication and of the scientific work process. Some social media may suit better and be mainly used to connect with colleagues, while others, perhaps those of a more general nature, are more efficient for public outreach. But as more researchers start to use social media the significance of the academic social networking sites may also increase, which will definitely attract even more research to them.

The newcomer in the battle between academic social networks, Loop (http://loop.frontiersin.org/about) developed by Frontiers, claims to be the "first research network available for integration into all journals and academic websites—making researchers discoverable across the boundaries of publishers and organizations." Based on this it would appear that Loop is trying to get journals on board and encourage them to display the researchers' Loop profiles next to the publications, or at least to connect to them directly from the articles. This definitely has some potential benefits, for instance for researchers to disambiguate themselves from other researchers with similar names and for interested readers to get in touch with the authors, but whether Loop will become popular among journals and researchers and reach a critical mass of users remains to be seen.

Whether there is demand for two or more very similar academic sites is a question that only time can answer. As academic social networks have failed before (e.g., Nature Network), it is perhaps even likely that only one of the existing sites will survive. Another possibility is that different academic social networking sites will become more specialized to specific disciplines.

Among the general social networking sites Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/) is the giant, with 1.35 billion monthly active users in 2014 9 it has no parallel and because of its sheer size Facebook is often compared to countries, i.e., if Facebook was a country it would be the largest in the world. From starting as a social network Facebook has turned into an advertising platform and even its commercial power parallels that of many countries. Although it has been reported that younger generations are leaving Facebook and moving on to smaller, more specialized networks (Matthews, 2015b), Facebook is used by all demographics and groups of people, including researchers. Facebook has the potential to provide a much wider variety of different types of interactions than, for instance, Twitter (likes, shares, comments, follows, visits). Facebook would certainly be a rich source for altmetrics: however, only Facebook's own researchers have access to the full wealth of data that is being collected from the users. Others have to settle for the API through which some of the open status updates on Facebook can be accessed, which makes Facebook less useful. The limited data access is troublesome as it hinders one of the fundamental requirements of research, namely reproducibility. If other researchers cannot have access to the data and repeat a research to verify its results, can it even be called research?

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com) is a professional network on which members can basically publish their CVs and share information about their education, job experience, and skills. In addition to this members can connect professionally and show on their profile with whom they are connected. LinkedIn has been found to be one of the most popular social networking sites among researchers (Bar-Ilan et al., 2012; Haustein, Peters, Bar-Ilan, et al., 2014; Van Noorden, 2014b); however, from an altmetrics point of view only small, qualitative studies of the connections could be done as LinkedIn does not provide an API for data collection at a large scale.

There are plenty of smaller and less popular social networks that are mainly used by the general public. Some are national (like VKontakte in Russia and QZone in China) while others are centered around specific shared interests of the members (like MySpace and music). These, however, are probably of lesser interest to altmetrics, partly because of limited access to data and partly because of the more general nature of both the user base and content. Nevertheless, things change quickly in social media and some new social media sites may be highly relevant for altmetrics in the future, sites that have perhaps not even been thought about yet.

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Welcome to the Library

Jessica Hagman , in Planning Library Orientations, 2018

Comparing Engagement by Network

The proliferation of social networking sites means that a library can not only share its story in more ways than ever but also spend much more time in developing content. With varying audience sizes, it can be difficult to see which networks provide the most return on the time invested in creating content. We calculated a comparative measure of engagement by totaling the number of engagements for each message and dividing by the number of account followers on that day. This calculation showed us that although Instagram is by far our smallest audience, the users there are most engaged with our content, with each post seeing a relative engagement rate of 3.9% of audience size over 2015 and 2016. By comparison, Twitter has only 0.5% engagement rate and Facebook a 1.34% rate. Going forward, we will need to decide how we want to parcel out the available time and resources for creating social content given this information.

Using the data provided by your social networking site can provide you with valuable information about what works—or does not work—on your campus, knowledge that can be used to develop campaigns throughout the rest of the school year. We spend a significant amount of time on Twitter posts because the audience there is so much larger, and a single engaging post can be seen by thousands of people. But these data indicate that each individual Twitter follower is much less likely to engage with our content than a follower on Instagram when we look at the messages in total.

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Social networking sites and your library career

Julia Gross , in Building Your Library Career with Web 2.0, 2012

What are the main issues or problems with social networking?

Whereas joining a social networking site may seem like an innocuous activity to some, as professionals we need to think hard about the implications of putting ourselves online. The first question to ask is: is it necessary to start networking socially? My answer is yes; as I have stated above, I think it is important to join in the conversation. And if you are reading this book you already have some interest in the topic. I will endeavour to convince you that it is worth it for your own career.

When using any of the social networks one of the important issues to keep in mind is context. Ask yourself why you are using the particular network. The common mistake users of social networking sites make is to not align their activities on the site with the purpose for which the network was set up. So firstly, ascertain what the parameters of the network are; and secondly, decide how you wish to use the network to advance your career. Then, aim to keep your interactions within these parameters. Each social networking site is different, with some more aligned to professional networking than others. For example, LinkedIn is first and foremost a professional network, so you should keep all your interactions on this network professional in nature. On the other hand, Facebook and MySpace are networks that provide a more personal, friendly, family context. However, this is changing now that Facebook provides the facility for group pages, which may be linked to a group or business.

One impact of Web 2.0 is that it is constantly pushing the boundaries. In our desire to participate we may just go with the flow without thinking of how particular softwares may sit with career goals. In terms of keeping to the context,

I find it unhelpful, for example, to have all my Twitter feed going into my LinkedIn profile. I choose some to go into LinkedIn and some not because I use these two social networks for quite different purposes. I do not necessarily want my professional connections to receive my social 'tweets', such as where the best coffee can be had in my neighbourhood. In older style online forums and discussion boards, some of this type of online communication may have been described as OT or 'off-topic' and would therefore have been discouraged or kept to a minimum. In other words, the users or members of the forum were drifting outside the purpose for which the site was set up. Web 2.0 challenges us and moves us outside such strictures. However, as professionals operating in the open social networking environment, we must keep the audience in the back of our minds. That audience may be just friends and colleagues, or it may include employers. Remember that information put online could be there forever.

In this chapter we have looked at the phenomenal growth in social media. In future chapters we will be looking at particular applications, such as for marketing, professional networking and professional development. I now briefly introduce three social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781843346517500029