Bibliography :

. Backstrom, L, Huttenlocher, D, Kleinberg, J, Lan, X, 2006, ‘Group Formation in Large Social Networks: Membership, Growth, and Evolution’

. Back, M, Stopfer, J, Vazire, S, Gaddis, S, Schmukle, S, Egloff, B, Gosling, S, 2009, ‘Facebook Profiles Reflect Actual Personality, Not Self-Idealization’

. FUCHS, C 2009, ‘Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society.’

. Boyd, D, Hargittai, E 2010, ‘Facebook privacy settings : Who cares?”

. Rifkin, A 2010, ‘How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today’, techcrunch.com, 2 October 2010, viewed 21^st September 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/02/facebook-bigger-google/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

. Van Grove, J 2010, ‘New Facebook Groups Designed to Change the Way You Use Facebook’, mashable.com, viewed 12th October, http://mashable.com/2010/10/06/facebook-groups-2/

. Goad, K 2010, ‘Social Networking and the Rise of Break-Ins’, cosmopolitan.com, viewed 19^th October 2010, http://www.cosmopolitan.com/advice/tips/burglaries-because-of-facebook

. Warren, C 2010, ‘Facebook Gets Hip to Data Portability’, mashable.com, viewed 12^th October 2010, http://mashable.com/2010/10/06/facebook-data-portability-2/

. O'Neill, N 2008, ‘What Exactly are Social Games?’, socialtimes.com, 31st July 2008, viewed 3^rd November 2010, http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/07/social-games/

Conclusion :

Social networking is not a revolution. It is been few years that it is a part of the web sphere. If we go back to the past, social networks were assimilating to chat rooms, forums, and softwares like MSN Messenger. It was simple with few risks. So, why nowadays it has such an importance for all scientists, sociologists, or philosophical. Perhaps just because it has a real impact on the actual society that it never happened. Our new social networks changed our behaviour through these websites and in the real life as well. In my opinion, Facebook was the most accurate choice for this blog. Firstly because I am a user addicted to this site, kind of a cyber drug. Secondly, maybe I am feeling concerned about how Facebook is using my personal data. And finally, what is the real impact of my profile around my friends. Through these six weeks, I learned and discovered a lot from this experience. Facebook is too important and influent to skip it. When I say it changed our behaviour in the real life, when we meet someone new, usually we say in the first sentences “Do you have a Facebook”. This reaction is weird because it sounds like, we talk but we don’t have enough time so let’s continue it online where you can check on my profile. It is kind of rude. Of course now, no one pays any attention to this behaviour. Few years before, people would have seen it inappropriate. So, our profile is the entry to the virtual world. Some scientists say that what you post on your profile, the way in which you manage it, is a reflect of yourself. This statement could be argued, because if we take the side to the other hypothesis that says that your profile is a self-idealisation. I would be agree with it, because let’s take the example of if I post a video with sexual content, it does not mean that I am a pervert, I could like the video simply because of the graphic. So I stick to this last idea, it would make false the first hypothesis. Then after our profile is on, many questions appear concerning the privacy, the surveillance, my involvement in communities, or how should I use my Facebook profile ? This social network could develop into us a lot of aspects that we would not suspect. We participate to social games, we discuss with other people who share the same interests for a same band, we add new pictures, everything sound fun and distractive. But how Facebook is using all these such important data ? no one really knows. That generates some techno-fears, and everyone suspect their “Friends” (which lost a lot of meaning). Last thing is, if one day Facebook will become a company which could rule Internet, what would happen ? Finally, there is a black point, that we forget so many times, which is : everything is linked, no matter what you do, and you never leave this digital world. It is a vicious circle.

W12 : Social Games and Communities.

Facebook is such an influent platform in the cyber world. It has changed the behaviour of the society, and the way in which we use social networking. Many papers deal with the impact on users, fears created, the danger of Facebook, or the privacy. What is happening inside this profiles sphere ?  Few societies, agencies, companies bet a lot on this website and his users. Firstly, friends were just adding other friends, and they sere sharing data and pictures. Progressively, information was coming to us. Were we lazier ? Do we get interest about something else that mad us forget about Google ? So personalised ads appeared, such as Groups and Games. If I have a good memory, Groups were only created by users themselves. About the rest of the world, it was to important for them to skip this society phenomenon. So communicants decided to include Facebook in their boucle of marketing / communication strategy. What for ? To create more networks, more communities, to foster customers loyalties. It is an easiest way to stay in touch with their potential client, smart isn’t it ? Do we still believe that we have the control of our life, specially now they have access to our personal data ? So what about “Social Games” ? According to Nick O’Neill, it is better to define social games in five points, such as : turn-based, awareness of others’ actions in games, casual gaming, multiplayer, and based on social platforms. We can guess that the main goal is to be fun and attractive, playing with other users to touch this notion of community. The weird feeling is usually, games mean to be in contact we the other players, more particular when it is mentioned social. You are expecting to see someone. This is wrong, the only social thing is all players who subscribed earlier to this game are gathered into this game. But not everyone has to be there at the same time, which is quite funny because his (or her) avatars are still in action. Are we loosing the common definition of game ? Even if it said social games, there is this screen that separate us and mark the limit between the real and digital life. If we extrapolate a little bite, we can get this kind of scene with our new smart phones and these applications / social games. And the worth thing is this notion of presence has to be questioned again. Then, to continue in the same direction, there is community, which is an important section to Facebook. Users who launch a group have to be careful to many elements such as the membership, the growth or the evolution.

W11 : What you post is what you are.

We approach several aspects of Facebook such privacy, the use, or the future of this social network for example. Let’s try to have a look at the profile itself. What does it show ? What does it mean ? Who are we trying to convince ? What do we want to say to the users of this platform of network’s generator ? “Facebook Profiles Reflect Actual Personality, Not Self-Idealization » (Back 2009) defines perfectly consequences of a digital life. Since the beginning, I always said that the real life and the cyber life are strongly connected, on so many aspects. Not only about your updates that indicate that you are single or you are heading to the university. Moreover, as we saw previously, this kind of information feed burglars with a golden spoon. Even if it is a part of your privacy, posting that and you are exposed. Furthermore, the connection could be seen like a transposition of your own personality into the digital world. There is no particular dramatic consequences, often it is just a reflect of what you are. But if you compare it to the case of Second Life, which is the most accurate example of virtual life, people gets an avatar and are able to live their self-idealisation life. Is it seen like an escape of the real life ? Just an other way to live an other better life, I guess. But, if I want to counter argument, I can pretend that we can’t compare it because, Second Life is a world of avatars, and Facebook just a succession of profiles with just a picture for the equivalence of avatar. Or, each profiles could be consider as an avatar, and if we follow my previous deduction, it is an self-idealisation. According to Back, after they have done the survey on 236 users of Online Social Networking Sites (OSNs), they compare the profile of each user and matched it with their answers from the test. They conclude just simply that our profile is a reflect of what we are. Maybe, I could be agreeing with these researches, but I find the strategy pretty simple. Even if they based their questions on fundamentals such as TIPI (Ten Item Personality Inventory) or BFI (Big Five Inventory), they classified users in only five categories of personality. This can’t be a generality, so it would mean that if someone post a video clip about rabbits hunting, it means that this person goes for the wear of fur ? That is a reasoning quite straightforward.

W10 : Privacy and surveillance.

« […] online communication tools transform society and our social relations. » (Fuchs 2010). Fuchs started his paper pointing this relevant fact. This is the reason he analysed Social Network Sites (SNS) in general. Several SNS appeared these last ten years, but it is obvious that Facebook became the most famous one, specially among teenagers. These kinds of websites have an important impact on the youth, and the way they manage their profile and their privacy settings is particular. First of all, why did Facebook become such influent in the web sphere ? just because of, according to Danah boyd and Heszter Hargittai, “[…] its positioning as a campus-oriented service” (Facbook Privacy Settings : Who cares ? 2010). That was a smart idea, to involve the young generation in this amazing project, and the most intelligent point was the will to create simply a network between all these students. Then two questions are coming up : what about the privacy ? and what about the surveillance ? Compare to the others SNS, the main idea was to gather all users with a public profile. Hence most of them could see the other one’s profile, when they were becoming friends, and then, they started to sneak a look to personal data. This attitude generated fears and suspicion. Who am I going to trust ? On the first side, surveys showed that different use of privacy exist between different generations. This could be use as a social analysis, because as Furchs says in his paper is that students, or the young generation have a really critical point of view about everything. That is why most of the time this group of people is targeted by the social networking. Then what ? How is the best way for us to manage our own privacy ? Let’s talk in general. If we stick to the Facebook’s history of privacy, this platform knew so many changes. They did it because they had to ameliorate the website, but we shouldn’t forget their main goal is to collect data. So each section of the website is dedicated to provide it. Your profile is automatically public, which means that you have to get involve into your profile to make it private. Again, when they do let you the choice to become an impenetrable kingdom of Facebook or to let you eaten by lurkers. A distinction between male and female could be notice about their management of their privacy, just because of one thing : safety or technopanic attributed by Marwick in 2008. One thing that is obvious, privacy is strongly linked to surveillance. The only fact that differentiates it is : privacy basically concerns the owner of the profile whereas surveillance contains several levels. By different level, I mean that is you are involved into the diffusion of your private data, also the others (friends, companies, groups) could keep your profile under surveillance.

W9 : I won’t be at home tonight guys !

Ok, I admit it, the article is an extract from a girly magazine…but I liked the way the author Kimberly Goad is raising the question of the security outside the cyber space. Even if it is two separated worlds, they are strongly connected due to the increasing number of users of social networks, and people who wants to get an unreal life. For my part, I am to naïve to think that whatever you post on Facebook, in this case, or Twitter, some people could use it for a wrong purpose. Anyway, this social phenomenon has always existed. Some people can ruin a project, a company, even a society, just by hacking, looting, stilling, because they think they can emphasised their thoughts and their rights. This group of persons think that it is the right way to express themselves. Back to Facebook, we have our circle of friends, we share thoughts and so many others things. Most of the time, we expose our life to the others. The problem is the control of our profile, or even more : the control of our cyber life. The question is : what do I want to do with it ? This is simple, but so many people forget it and loose the control of their private life. We are watching each other constantly, and that doesn’t disturb anyone now. We developed a new state of mind, which is cyber, or online, voyeurism. If we try to define voyeurism, there is this notion where we are hiding (somewhere) to watch something. But this is new because we are still hiding behind our computers, or screens, but everyone knows that a friend or someone else is checking our profile and all our own data (date of birth, pictures, school career). This explains that there are different levels of watching. And the paradoxical fact is people keeps publishing, and updating their status, their profile. Some of them complain themselves, or some of them gossip about profile they read, but when sign up for this website they knew how it works. With the story happened in this article, we could wonder if the term friend still means this strong amicable relationship between two persons. I am asking this question because the police was pretty sure that the burglar was in “Keri's nearly 600 Facebook friends, the alleged suspect had access to her profile page” (Goad 2010). So does it mean that he is still a friend to Keri ? Of course not, it would make no sense.

W9 : I won’t be at home tonight guys !

Ok, I admit it, the article is an extract from a girly magazine…but I liked the way the author Kimberly Goad is raising the question of the security outside the cyber space. Even if it is two separated worlds, they are strongly connected due to the increasing number of users of social networks, and people who wants to get an unreal life. For my part, I am to naïve to think that whatever you post on Facebook, in this case, or Twitter, some people could use it for a wrong purpose. Anyway, this social phenomenon has always existed. Some people can ruin a project, a company, even a society, just by hacking, looting, stilling, because they think they can emphasised their thoughts and their rights. This group of persons think that it is the right way to express themselves. Back to Facebook, we have our circle of friends, we share thoughts and so many others things. Most of the time, we expose our life to the others. The problem is the control of our profile, or even more : the control of our cyber life. The question is : what do I want to do with it ? This is simple, but so many people forget it and loose the control of their private life. We are watching each other constantly, and that doesn’t disturb anyone now. We developed a new state of mind, which is cyber, or online, voyeurism. If we try to define voyeurism, there is this notion where we are hiding (somewhere) to watch something. But this is new because we are still hiding behind our computers, or screens, but everyone knows that a friend or someone else is checking our profile and all our own data (date of birth, pictures, school career). This explains that there are different levels of watching. And the paradoxical fact is people keeps publishing, and updating their status, their profile. Some of them complain themselves, or some of them gossip about profile they read, but when sign up for this website they knew how it works. With the story happened in this article, we could wonder if the term friend still means this strong amicable relationship between two persons. I am asking this question because the police was pretty sure that the burglar was in “Keri's nearly 600 Facebook friends, the alleged suspect had access to her profile page” (Goad 2010). So does it mean that he is still a friend to Keri ? Of course not, it would make no sense.