Matt Bush

CS73N

May 4, 2007

Sections in this document:

• Overview and research plan
• Reason this research is important
• Schedule and goals
• Audience and site publicity
• Website maintenance and costs
• Intellectual property, risks

Overview and research plan

My webpage will be a presentation of research on social networking websites. I will use the website to organize my findings, provide links to resource websites, and to present my research in ways that my audience will find useful. In my research, I plan on comparing social networking websites’ statistics and features, to analyze their success at reaching certain populations. I will also look at the social issues that social networking sites have been part of, such as profile privacy and online safety, and compare these sites’ policies towards these issues. Finally, I will use these statistics and these issues to predict the growth of the social networks of the future: what policies create the best balance between networking and safety? What audiences have the most growth potential for joining social networking sites?

While there are many resources online for comparing website performance, such as Alexa site ratings, few go in-depth to analyze the success. And while there are a collection of sites that analyze website privacy issues, such as EPIC, most of them are biased towards being extremely cautious and wary, not giving social networks enough credit for their potential. Thus, I think my site will be a unique addition to the social network analysis resources that are on the web. When it has become more developed, I hope to expand my research topics into such topics as how social networks can help create communities that would different to maintain in offline circumstances, and how social networking sites can change the way communication within business and education is structured. This will ensure that my site maintains a unique research approach to my topic.

Reason this research is important

There is a lot of potential for social networking sites. They have been one of the largest growing sectors of the Internet since about 2004 or 2005, expanding from a basic communication tool to a means of sharing multimedia, collaborating, and planning events. The capabilities of social networking sites will only expand more as sites’ audience bases grow broader.

At the same time, there are a lot of risks to social networking. The Internet is full of vulnerability and deception, and social networking sites are no exception to this rule. In particular, social networking sites help online harassers or predators target specific victims such as people of a race or young women. Social networking sites are also notorious for spreading phishing scams, scams designed to steal passwords and other identifying information from users. All of the stories people hear about in the news about social networking sites has given these sites a bleak reputation amongst teachers, parents, law enforcement, and politicians.

I hope to examine and resolve some of those issues by providing a balanced analysis, praising social networking sites for their features and milestones but cognizant of the issues that they face as well. I hope that my analysis can alleviate some of the misconceptions people have about these sites and give them an accurate picture of how such issues on these sites play out.

Schedule and goals

As soon as possible, I want to research the development history of the web’s currently popular social networking sites. I will use that background to create a foundation for continuing my research. I currently have Google News alerts sent to my email to help me find out new developments and views about social networking. I will check these alerts frequently to find any content or links to add to my research.

My first deadline is my presentation date, either Thursday or Friday, May 10th or 11th. I want to have substantial material on my website by this date, at least enough to demonstrate how my site is structured and give an example of the data and social issues I am studying. My second deadline is the end of the quarter, in which I want to have content in every part of my site, with no serious sections missing. After that, I may continue to develop my site as I continue my research; the size of the complete website may be small or large.

Audience and site publicity

My website has two main audiences. The first and primary audience is potential social networking clients. People who wish to find out about social networking websites before determining which ones are appropriate for themselves, their employees, students, or children can benefit from the information I provide. People who hear about social networks that face social issues and concerns can learn more about these from my website. My secondary audience is web developers. By reading my analyses, they could best formulate an approach to social networking issues and concerns, to develop the web’s next big social network.

There are three ways that I will help my audiences find my site. The first way is show my site to the Stanford community. I can link to my site from my Stanford homepage, provide links from my profiles on social networking sites, and possibly ask the Unofficial Stanford Blog and other Stanford pages to link to it when it becomes a fully-developed page. The second way is to get my site to show up on search engines. Keeping my page public, putting effective meta-tags in my pages, and providing links to my website as in the above step all will enhance my site’s rating. Lastly, I can refer people on the web who have similar interests to my website. When I find news articles, blogs, or forums about social networking issues and development, I can provide a relevant link to one of my pages in the comment box, to bring the right audience to my site.

Website maintenance and costs

The web space that I use to host my website is provided by Stanford. Stanford allows students web storage space for personal use and research, but not for business use. Thus, there are no costs for storing my web space beyond being an enrolled student.

The only person who will add new content to the web space is myself. Because my site is self-run, there are no costs in hiring others as web designers, researchers, or site maintenance. To personally maintain the site, I will visit it frequently, review the information to make sure it is current, and make sure all links stay active. I will mark the date when I edit articles so that anyone reading it knows how current it is—so nobody will misinterpret phrases such as “a big issue now” or “this past year” if I happen to include them.

Intellectual property, risks

My website presents research I am doing, so I will label all pages with research content with a copyright label as appropriate, to protect my intellectual property. Doing so makes my research appear authentic and presentable.

There are no legal aspects that are of immediate concern for my website, but depending on the depth of my content, I should be careful about my use of information. If I provide website statistics from another site, I need to cite my references. If I go so in-depth as to give website logos or screenshots of images, I should be careful to make sure I have the right to display that image.