NETWORKING SITES

The area I picked relating to technology is networking working sites. I decided to look for articles about this area because I use networking sites most days so I obviously have some interest in it.

The articles I read were called ‘Facebook users spend a full three days a year on the site’ and ‘Infected with Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD))?’

The first article talks about how much time people in the UK have spent on the most popular social networking sites in September 2009. The research was carried out by Nielsen Online. They calculated that the most addicted users have spent over 125 hours on the site during the last year – the equivalent of more than a whole working week. The company estimated that Britons spent 11.1 billion minutes in total across the 75 most visited social media sites during this month alone. This was an 83 per cent increase on the time spent on these sites during the same month last year.



Facebook was by far the most popular site dominating 75 per cent of the total amount of time people spent on social networking sites. YouTube was the second most popular social networking site among British users. Slashkey, the parent company of Farmville, the popular game on social networks, came in third and Wikipedia came in fourth.



Nic Howell, deputy editor of NMA, the digital media industry publication which commissioned the research, said, “Not only are Britons investing their most precious resource – time – in Facebook, but, according to Nielsen, the site has increased its audience by 52 per cent year on year, while also increasing the time spent per person by 51 per cent. The adoption of real-time, Twitter-like features has played a vital role in this.”



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6502237/Facebook-users-spend-three-solid-days-a-year-on-the-site.html





The second article talks about a new looming disorder called Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD). Already there is the Facebook Addiction Test (FAT) suggested by operators of Facebook. It is the first validated and reliable measure of addictive use of the Facebook. FAT is a 20-item questionnaire that measures mild, moderate, and severe levels of Facebook Addiction.



A group of students at Stanford University, California, are undertaking a course named “The Psychology of Facebook” which is the brainchild of Professor B J Fogg, a pioneering persuasion psychologist who founded the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford. His main goal is to help his students become world class experts on the psychology of facebook. Each week the class dissects an aspect of Facebook and looks at the way it works, the psychology behind it and what impression users are trying to convey.



This very popular growing site was set up as a project five years ago by a guy called Mark Zuckerburg. The initial aim was to help students keep in touch over the internet and get to know each other better. Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up and soon after that the network was quickly extended to other colleges and universities.

Statistics indicate that more than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day worldwide with 4 million status updates each day. There are 2 billion photos uploaded to the site each month and over 3 million events created each month. There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.



The fastest growing age group using Facebook is users older than 55 with an increase of 108% in September. The most prolific age group using social networks continues to be 18 to 24 year olds with 32.3% of the visitors. Users 25 to 34 were 26.9% of the visitors.



Contrary to findings that suggest online social networking sites make people anti-so or less sociable, a study by Cambridge University has revealed that Facebook can encourage people to be more sociable. Researchers discovered Facebook gave people more choice on how they conduct relationships and was "a way of storing biography and enhancing social memory".



The study showed many people used it to track people they liked or to find out what ex-partners were up to. People also used it to keep in touch with old school and university friends who they might otherwise lose contact with. As a result it could change the way people associated at a fundamental level, meaning former relationships and associations can be revived, according to the study.



Examples such as: A couple with the same name who found each other through social networking website Facebook is preparing to tied the knot in October. Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, 20, was bored one evening last year when she put her name into the site and came across Kelly Carl Hildebrandt, 24. She sent the only other Kelly Hildebrandt, of Lubbock, Texas, a message and they became friends. Ms Hildebrandt, a student from Miami, Florida, said she believed the chain of events was "all God's timing".
http://news.peacefmonline.com/features/200910/30392.php