The Power of the Social Network

The power of the social network in this day and age is colossal. The concept of a person's contacts, whether it be friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, etc., being easily accessible to that person is invaluable where and when the Internet is the super-platform of communication. Businesses, especially advertisers and marketers, see the digital "word-of-mouth" as gold mine to spread the word to as many people as possible in a cost-effective setting. Social network giants like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster have been repeatedly tempted to sell their accounts at a price much like dating websites do. However, the most successful ones have kept it free of charge because of the potential velocity at which the entire network can grow. Since the popularity of social networking began there are many competitive social networking companies vying for the potential user to create and maintain an account on the network. As a college student that has grown up with the change form Web 1.0 to 2.0 I reminisce of earlier times where MySpace and Sconex were the sites to be on, subconsciously sizing up real-life friends to how many friends they have on this social network, or whether or not you kept Tom as a friend or not. Hell, I remember a time when AOL was the "social network" back in the day. It wasn't as free financially or conceptually as today's social networks are but it had fulfilled its purpose well for its time. I recently saw the movie "The Social Connection", which is (loosely) based on Mark Zuckerberg and his rise to power in creating Facebook and more on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich. It was entertaining to say the least if the movie, which I suspect, doesn't exactly cover the origins of Facebook truthfully.
My Facebook profile is used more for leisure and social network (e.g. finding out about parties, keeping tabs on friends, use as an alternative communication tool). However, LinkedIn is strictly business for me. I use LinkedIn as a digital addendum to my resume and keep connections solely on the basis of the chance that I may further my career, which will be fully decided by the time I graduate. The layouts between Facebook and LinkedIn are distinguishly by most aspects. Facebook's profile formatting displays the person's name in bold, picture, date of birth, relationship status, gender of romantic interest, and political and religious views. It also shows your networks which primarily consist of high schools and colleges that the person is or has been a student of. These networks separate student bodies en masse in order to make finding friends from your local area easier. There is also space to add activities, hobbies, favorites that include, music, books, television shows, and movies, and a favorite quotes section. There is also room for photo albums, which can contain anything from your trip to Europe or last weekend's party, videos, and applications that range from games to other social knick-knacks. Photos arguably have the most versatility on Facebook since they can be "tagged" to a profile (for example: a picture that has you and two friends that both have a Facebook profile can be linked to their respective profiles without their consent. Of course, they have the option of "de-tagging"). All of these features are provided to the user in order to obtain the perfect (or less than perfect depending on opinion) digitalized social experience.
MySpace is what I would consider the predecessor to Facebook in terms of rank of popularity. MySpace was the site that initially caught my interest into social networking. Back in the day, MySpace used to be like Facebook, with the profile picture, age, hometown, and the other personal information. The big difference with MySpace and Facebook is that MySpace was almost completely HTML and XML based and that customizing a profile was not only considered easy, it was ubiquitous. MySpace's system was so easily accessible anyone would have been hard-pressed to find a decent profile without any background, music playing in the background, or any silly applications that gave the "kiddie", yet fun personal touch.
LinkedIn has a more refined, minimalist display, which professional job-seekers create and market their digital representation to a potential employer. Appropriately, most of the profile is in a resume format, with additional "skills", "summary", and "recommendations" sections. It also shows "connections" to other profiles instead of "friends". LinkedIn also has a news feed, but has less coverage compared to Facebook's. LinkedIn's privacy policies and application recommendations are tailored to the benefit of the professional as opposed to the casual social network user. LinkedIn is a social network that attracts a specific target market of the user instead of the all-around, something-for-everyone, market that Facebook currently dominates.
I use both Facebook and Linkedin religiously, digitally separating business and pleasure. There are no links from my Facebook to my LinkedIn account and vice versa solely for that reason. LinkedIn provides me with an accessible, reliable history of my school and work stints. Facebook is my platform to get in touch with all my friends and sync their information to whatever device that needs the collaborative information (e.g. my cell phone's address book). Facebook and LinkedIn have their merits to their specific service and they provide their respective services wonderfully. Most of the executives who run such successful websites are usually linked to each other in some way, shape, or form. For example, the Founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has funded Facebook during a part of its inception into the social network market. Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster along with Shawn Fanning, was President of Facebook and was portrayed in "The Social Network" by Justin Timberlake. Needless to say, even the social network executives find their own product addicting.