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Social Networking Research

It is both a honor and a pleasure to introduce a guest blogger to 4WebResults. His name is Philip Nicholson and he's a young man just about to enter college. Philip has taken on a 10-day research project to learn about the trends in Social Networking as they relate to teenagers, from the POV of a teenager. So read on and stay tuned for his frequent posts. And feed back what you think too. I have a feeling Philip is going to uncover some wonderful gems in this work.

Tom

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Hi! On this first entry in a series that will appear on this blog discussing the topic of online social networking for teenagers, I'd like to introduce myself and talk a bit about why this topic is important. My name is Philip Nicholson; I work with 4WebResults to register RSS feeds and create content. For this month of May, I am working on a project to investigate teen social networking. I'll be examining both where online social networking is now and where it will go in the future. My ultimate goal is to find some concrete business applications of social networking that will appeal to the next-generation business world ... today's teens. I'd like to extend my thanks to Tom Parish for offering me the opportunity to blog about this rising issue on the Internet and in society.

Let's take a look at the big picture before we dive into conversation on teen social networking. It is an unavoidable fact that online social networking has completely taken over the teenage audience, and however much negative publicity this may get ... today's teens are the next generation of businesspeople. Monitoring how they use the Internet today tells us a lot about how online business will work for them over the next few years. To compare these sites -- which are often viewed as "online popularity contests" by outsiders -- to businesses may seem illogical at first. However, in March 2006, the social networking site MySpace secured a spot on the Top 10 most-visited sites that month. The average time a visitor spent on MySpace topped the average visit times for eBay, Amazon, Microsoft, and MSN, among others. Ignoring online social networking is no longer possible; it has taken the Internet by storm.

For teens, these social networking sites aren't just about connecting with friends; they can do that anywhere. The appeal of online social networking as it exists today lies in the accessibility of media. Using MySpace as an example ... they recently launched MySpace Video, a service in which users can upload and share video content. This stands next to MySpace Music, a service launched for, as the name implies, the sharing of music directly from the artists that produce it. This empowers today's teens with THEIR media. They have the power to produce a short film or write a song and have it viewed by an essentially limitless audience online. As a group of people often stripped of their individuality by the "teenager" label, today's teens are grasping this opportunity to stand out and get noticed. It's more than a popularity contest, though, because these teens are producing media. As in the business world, they produce content that their "consumers" then view. It's a slightly different approach to an age-old system, and it's happening all over the Internet. Because a teen can write a song and instantly share it with a fan halfway around the world, they essentially command a global audience.

We've covered why social networking is important to teens. In my next entry, we'll discuss the skeleton of online social networking ... the actual features behind the major sites. There's more interesting content coming. Stay tuned. Thanks to the readers and again to Tom Parish for offering me a guest position on his blog.

Philip