Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3.1
Examples of SNSs
Service name
Start
Registered members (million)
Network structure
Facebook
Feb. 2004
800
Bidirectional link
Google+
Jun. 2011
25
Unidirectional link
GREE
Feb. 2004
25
Unidirectional link
mixi
Feb. 2004
40
Bidirectional link
LinkedIn
May 2003
100
Bidirectional link
Mobage
Feb. 2006
20
Unidirectional link
MySpace
Aug. 2003
200
Bidirectional link
For instance, Facebook
1
has over 800 million registered users; that is larger than
the population of any country except for China and India. Facebook users can join
with their name registration, e-mail address and other profile information, and can
then search for, and make, friends on Facebook. These relationships can be viewed
by other friends, thereby developing 'friend of friend' chains on Facebook.
Thus the network can be described as being constructed and evolved according
to the real relationships among friends.
See other SNSs in Table
3.1
: Google + ,
2
GREE,
3
mixi,
4
LinkedIn,
5
Mobage,
6
MySpace,
7
are all famous online services.
SNS seems to be a visualized relationship of friends from our real lives. On the
other hand, anyone can anonymously access this personal information. Once such a
piece of personal information diffuses on the SNS, nobody can control the flow of
information. We should become prudent when we use personal, confidential and
potentially harmful information on SNSs.
3.2.2 Blogosphere
The blogosphere can be defined as including all blogs on the World Wide Web
(WWW). Typically, an individual blogger writes an article on his/her blog, and
after having read the article, another blogger gives a comment or trackback to the
article. The information diffuses according to the hyperlinks on the WWW
(Table
3.2
).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
