Crime and Social Networking Sites

Social networkers beware: with the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday quickly approaching it is important to be aware of a growing problem in the world of social networking sites (SNS). Most SNS crime is associated with the solicitation of minors, but a growing trend is very relevant to the holiday season as millions of SNS users will flock home and desert their homes, or other habitats. Because of the seemingly constant and always revealing updates released by Twitter and Facebook users, it is important to remind users to keep some information to themselves. This applies especially to information that reveals detailed accounts about the user's location and plans. With ever-rising number of Twitter followers and Facebook friends individuals update to, it is important to keep in mind that some followers and friends may not always have the best intentions and could use the revealing updates for malice.

For example: if a share-happy Tweeter indicates in his updates (to his 400 followers) that he will be out of town for Thanksgiving visiting family afar, this may be received as an invitation for sinister followers to wreak havoc on the Tweeter's home. This problem of revealing too much information to a sometimes invisible online audience has been around for quite some time, and is becoming more relevant than ever with social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook that flourish with user's constant updates.

I can recall as a teen being apprehensive about a number of my friend's AOL Instant Messenger "away messages" that exposed in detail travel plans for anyone with a screen name to read. An satirical take on this may read: "Going 2 Florida for Christmas! Flight at 5:30 out of Logan... be back in a week from Monday! The key is under the mat! Happy Holidays!" With the ever-present issue of invisible audiences, teens may be putting their messages of holiday cheer out to the wrong people.

As a teen I thought I was being paranoid about the actual threat associated with revealing SNS updates. However a real-life instance of this problem that deals with savvy SNS users utilizing the medium to aid their crime is the recent crime spree against various members of young Hollywood like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Rachel Bilson. The criminals collectively referred to as the 'Burglar Bunch' by blog TMZ used the constant Twitter and Facebook updates from the starlets to comprise a vast amount of information about their where-a-bouts. The group of teens who make up the Burglar Bunch used this information to find out when the celebrities would be out of town so that they could break into their homes and rob the stars of not only their valuable possessions but also of their sense of privacy and safety.

I realize the average SNS user may not have as many followers as Paris Hilton, but it never hurts to be aware of what you're indicating in your updates and who may have access to them. The impending holiday season makes this advice more relevant than ever.

Sharing Social Networking Sites

As social networking sites gain in popularity, their original devotees almost always have to be open to sharing their beloved SNS with others. Whether the inclusion of other groups is a good or bad thing is up to you to decide, but there is a growing trend in social networking sites as they expand in size, to expand into different demographics.

An early example of this is Myspace, which started out as a niche community for musicians and their diehard fans. The site then exploded, and quickly became the hottest SNS on the web. It seemed almost everyone had a Myspace. At first I'm sure this was aggravating to the diehard fans of Myspace who before did not have to share their intimate community with teenyboppers and their parents. However, many of the original users of Myspace used the site as their lemon and made lemonade in the form of now being able to share their music with the massive and accessible Myspace audience. This audience propelled a lucky few musical talents to fame and fortune, such as Soulja Boy, Lily Allen and Sean Kingston. After Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of Myspace, the site launched its own recording label to further enable the hunt for undiscovered talent on the site. Going "mainstream" and including users from different demographics allowed Myspace to become a juggernaut for advertising revenue and a haven for the prying eyes of advertisers into the minds of users through the collection of user data.

Similarly, Facebook started out as a very tight-knit community of Harvard students created by Mark Zuckerberg, gradually expanding to allow all college students. This first collection of expansions morphed Facebook from a small community of users where mostly everyone knew each other's name to a vast SNS encompassing tens of thousands of coeds. This initial and gradual expansion of Facebook opened the doors for social networking between students across the country. Facebook has since expanded its parameters to allow anyone with an email address to join, letting everyone into what was once Harvard's guilty pleasure.

In Robert Strohmeyer's article focusing on the ever expanding demographic of adults on Facebook he worries that the presence of baby boomers on social networking sites like Facebook will cause a flee from the site in younger users. Strohmeyer's anxiety about this mass exodus from Facebook is ungrounded, as users of social networking sites have always had to deal with their SNS communities expanding and broadening to include different demographics. These original, younger users will somehow find a way to co-exist with their older counterparts, to make the SNS a space for all to flourish and network, that is, until the next big thing in social networking comes along and the cycle starts all over again. Commentators like Strohmeyer maybe overzealous in placing their blame of the disintegration of social networking on the presence of baby boomers. The demise of many social networking sites is in many cases simply because of timing and the arrival of new technologies.

Social networking sites must always expand and accept new demographics of users to join to further their relevance and shelf life. The premise and history of social networking sites has solidified the notion that bigger is better, but will this notion always hold true in the future?

New Media Self Promotion & the Real Housewife

Last night's season five premiere of Bravo's hit reality television show The Real Housewives of Orange County prompted me to to extend my case study on the Web Celebrity, and to show how the stars of the show have used New Media, specifically Social Networking Sites like Facebook and Twitter, to their advantage. For those of you living under a rock, I'll give you a little background on the Real Housewives franchise. The "Real Housewives of.." is a reality television show depicting the lavish and dramatic lives of groups of women in Orange County, Atlanta, New York and New Jersey. The show has garnered record-breaking ratings for Bravo and will continue to expand in the future with new installments popping up constantly. There is even a rumored Real Housewives of Washington DC reportedly being cast right now.

This show has catapulted a number of women from somewhat obscurity to pretty substantial fame. It is important to note that the television show has not been the only vehicle the women have used to achieve this fame, each housewife maintains a Facebook profile and Twitter account to sustain and expand their ever-growing fan bases. The SNS medium has become especially important to the cash-strapped housewives featured in the RHOOC. The medium, specifically Facebook and Twitter, has acted as a new vehicle for the Housewives to attempt to maintain their lavish lifestyles hit hard by economic downturn our nation is experiencing. Here are a couple examples:

Former real estate power-broker Jeana Keough's business has plummeted in the past year. Keough has resorted to Facebook to hawk various endorsement deals with brands like BriteAge, and Duzoxin. Keough constantly updates her Facebook and Twitter statuses promoting her use of the products and encouraging others to try them themselves. Facebook has also proved to be a legitimate medium for re-connecting with old friends, as Keough noted on her Bravo blog that a high school friend contacted her through her page and offered to pay for Keough's daughter Kara's summer classes.

Housewife Tamra Barney's finances have also seen better days, as the Barneys are currently listing their OC mansion at a significantly lower price than what they paid for it. Barney has utilized her Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote her new website to her 5,000 Facebook friends and over 8,000 Twitter followers.

Although housewife Vicki Gunvalson is still flush with cash, she uses her Facebook and Twitter accounts to expand her budding Insurance business, and her line of denim. The accounts are also ways to promote her various public appearances. Gunvalson uses her Facebook account to connect with fans, going so far as to recruit employees and clients.

As our country faces difficult economic times, it will be interesting to see how social networking sites are utilized even more in the future as a sources of income and in ways to promote various business ventures.

New Media Self Promotion & the Web Celebrity

This week we examined Social Networking Site (SNS) profiles as modern-day self portraits. Users have the ability to portray or even promote themselves in anyway they want. Users send signals in these portraits to reveal information about their personalities, interests, and other personal information.

These online portraits that users create can be constructed as a means of self-promotion to either fabricate or gain fame. With this ability to self-promote, aspiring celebrities and even actual celebrities flock to SNS's to garner attention and awareness about the cause closest to their heart: their fame and notoriety. Celebrities like "D-Lister" Kathy Griffin use their Facebook Fan Pages as a way to promote their latest business ventures, appearances and thoughts. Griffin's page encourages fans to purchase her recently released memoir, to purchase tickets to her comedy shows, to tune into her Bravo reality TV show and to attend book signings across the nation. The SNS medium has allowed Griffin's status as a celebrity to rise, as well as the value of her bank account.

This ability to gain fame through new media has spawned a new class of celebrity: the Web Celebrity. Celebrities have been made out of regular folks like Mario Lavandeira also known as blogger Perez Hilton, author turned blogger Arianna Huffington, and Jessica Rose better known as Youtube star Lonelygirl15. These three individuals have taken advantage of New Media to gain international notoriety. Hilton's blog on celebrity culture garners millions of a hit day, as does Huffington's blog which incorporates aspects of news, blogs and videos. Advertisers pay big bucks for the opportunity to reach Hilton's and Huffington's readers. Jessica Rose has translated her fame to land lucrative commercial and movie deals. New Media has given an eclectic group of individuals the opportunity to attain fame and fortune by giving them a platform to showcase their unique insights and talents.

Unnecessary Moral Panic

Moral panic is the frenzy and terror that arises after an issue is stirred up by whistleblowers with little else to do than wreck havoc on a perfectly content group of people. These whistleblowers feel it is their obligation to create pandemonium over a usually minimally threatening terror. Case in point: the H1N1 Flu. Although there are many theories about who blew the H1N1 Flu threat out of proportion, some group with a hidden agenda decided to not only attach a horrible stigma to swine- pigs have never gotten a worse rap than the first weeks of the "Swine Flu" outbreak- but to also create an imminent threat of unknown consequences of catching the Flu. Moral panic ensued, and schools, businesses, and almost every organization in the United States panicked and scrambled to try and prevent an outbreak by providing Purrell dispensers at every opportunity they could.

Moral panic extends beyond disease and famine, it can also affect Social Networking Sites (SNS) and lately Facebook has been struck with it regularly. Moral panic first struck social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace with the scare over sexual predators and underage SNS users. New media helped spread the furry associated with the threat of sexual predators luring your adolescents into meeting up with them and before you knew it, parents and children's advocacy groups were up in arms with the situation.

Television programs like NBC'S To Catch a Predator did not help the panic by showcasing sexual predators in the act of engaging in explicit conversations with volunteers posing as teens from the group Perverted Justice. The show helped local authorities put hundreds of criminals behind bars but at what cost to the public's sanity? Are the concerns and scenarios raised so outlandish that the chance of them actually affecting your children is slim to none? Are children really looking to chat and meet up with 40-year-old men? The question is, when do whistleblowers and advocacy groups cross the line from being informative and productive groups who spread the word of possible dangers to being nuisances and initiators of unnecessary and excessive moral panic?

Facebook After Death

Today's discussion concerning Facebook's policy on deceased users left me with a lot of questions so I decided to check out Facebook and see their actual stance on the issue. After searching for quite a bit of time, I finally found Facebook's most up to date policy on deceased member's accounts. Facebook deals with the issue in the "Help Center" under the title "Memorializing Accounts." They first explain what memorializing an account means:

When a user passes away, we memorialize their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account removes certain sensitive information (e.g., status updates and contact information) and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance. Memorializing an account also prevents all login access to it.

Facebook's approach to the controversial and touchy material of death is very well versed and respectful of the user's rights. It is an appropriate alternative to deleting the account altogether and allows for the deceased's user's family and friends to memorialize their loved one, while still respecting some boundaries with the removal of select information. It will be interesting to see how this new concept of "online grieving" plays out. Handling the passing of users will most certainly be a disputed topic for social networking sites in the future.

Although this is a somewhat morbid observation this topic is becoming especially relevant as the average age of users rises, creating a greater likelihood for the passing of users. It is inevitable that this issue will become more contested as the numbers of older users are growing at a rapid pace. According to data from iStrategyLab the number of Facebook users 55 and older grew 513.7% from January 2009 to July 2009. With this older demographic invading Facebook, no one can deny the relevance and importance of policy on the passing of users.

Online Attitude

In the online world of bloggers and social networking site users a new issue is arising over internet identity, I'd like to coin a new term to envelop this issue "online attitude." Online attitude refers to the differing personas between a person online and offline, specifically the increased confidence internet users feel when expressing their views online. This new dilemma of online attitude looks at how differently internet users act online versus, and why.

The principle difference between online and offline actions and personas is because of the medium itself. The internet allows users through forums like blogs and social networking sites to express themselves in a place where they face no direct rebuttals or backlash, allowing them to more freely express their views. This freedom of expression can sometimes extend itself too far and cause users to go too far in their expressions and sometimes act more irrationally then honestly. The nature of the internet's environment allows for a desensitized and depersonalized expression of one's self.

Bloggers like Perez Hilton have faced many problems with the blogging medium's freedom of expression. Hilton is infamous for his unforgiving and critical opinions of celebrities. As his blog gained more and more notoriety his online attitude became more aggressive and unforgiving. Hilton is open about the harsh criticism he receives from the celebrities he bashes, usually brief scoldings for his insensitive musings on celebrity's images, weight, and appearance and work. In July 2009, Hilton was confronted by Will.i.am for his extremely harsh commentary on Will, and other members of the Black Eyed Peas leading to a physical altercation between Will's manager Liborio "Polo" Molina and Hilton where Polo gives Hilton a black eye. Although online attitude has some benefits in revealing honesty through a certain comfort attained with the online medium, it also has many drawbacks when the attitude reveals irrational and inconsiderate behavior.