• Margaret Simons

12 March 2008
The internet looks like becoming a single social networking platform, writes MARGARET SIMONS

JUST when you think you?ve got a handle on what the internet is or might be, it shifts. Those of us who have in middle life familiarised ourselves with Google and email while dismissing social networking as a passing fad for teenagers should be thinking again. The data suggest that social networking may turn out to be what the Internet is all about ? its killer application ? and that our children will think us stupid for not seeing this at first glance.

Last month?s issue of Computer magazine made a bold claim ? that social networking internet sites were not merely time wasters or means for teens to organise parties and share music. Rather they were ?an evolution in human social interaction.? Professors Alfred Weaver and Benjamin Morrison ? both researchers in computer science ? claimed that the use of social networking sites is causing a major shift in the internet?s function and design.

The figures back them up. Social networking has become mainstream behaviour in many countries, and Australia is not far behind. According to a Pew Internet and American Life project report more than half of American teenagers use online social networking and have created personal profiles online.

Meanwhile a report released by Hitwise Australia last month shows that here, too, social networking is mainstream. The leading social networks in the Asia Pacific rank amongst the top ten websites visited by Internet users. Use of social networking sites in Australia grew by 62 per cent over the twelve months to January this year, and as social networking grows the use of other internet services, such as search engines and email, is falling.

The trends are small at the moment, but clear. Web based email use accounted for 5.7 per cent of internet site visits in Australia in February 2007, but by January this year the figure had dropped to 4.8 per cent. Search engine visits accounted for over 12.4 per cent of internet site visits in 2007, but had fallen to below 10.86 per cent in January this year. Meanwhile social networking sites had grown from 2.9 per cent of site visits to 4.6 per cent.

People spend longer on social networking sites than they do elsewhere. Hitwise?s report found that the users of Australia?s leading social networking site, MySpace, spend an average of 27 minutes and 46 seconds on the site. Facebook, the number two site, keeps its users for an average of 21 minutes and 15 seconds. This compares with an average of just 12 minutes across all internet sites.

So what are people doing on these sites? The demographics support the general view that sites like Myspace are used largely by young people, whereas Facebook and LinkedIn attract older, affluent professionals.

But this sort of cutting and dicing will fast become irrelevant, because increasingly the sites are linked. Hitwise?s ?click through? measurements show that traffic from social networking sites goes to other social networking sites, as users alert their friends and colleagues to photos or videos or blog entries posted elsewhere.

Google ? as usual, quick to catch the trend ? last year announced a plan to standardise the back end of social networking sites. Its open source framework, OpenSocial, will allow users to write one application for use across all social networking sites seamlessly. If OpenSocial becomes standard, or if other developers come up with similar ideas, then the entire internet will become a single social networking platform and, according to Weaver and Morrison, ?new ways of human interaction will proliferate? with all social networks connected, the internet will truly mature in its transformation to a social platform.?

All this is a shift that has not been fully anticipated by the world?s media companies and marketers ? although there is an exception, of course. When Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace he was widely ridiculed. We can now say that the old dog proved very adept at learning new tricks.

If these trends play out, then social networks will become one of the most important media channels. What do you want to watch tonight? Probably something your friends have recommended, and probably online. What media text is worth reading? The ones your friends are talking about. So Rupert may own the platform. He may even be making some of the content, but there is no doubt that media power will work differently in this new environment.

According to Hitwise?s report, ?internet users are increasingly? receiving topical information ?pushed? to them from their peers through social networks, which may be pre-empting the need to seek information on Search Engines.? Just as significant, even the most rudimentary use of social networking sites involves the users in ?doing? media, rather than only being consumers of it. At a bare minimum, a user of a social networking site must post information about themselves. Most likely they will include a photograph. Normally they will soon move to sharing clips, videos, book collections and photo albums.

Meanwhile Professors Weaver and Morrison cite the mass murder at Virginia Technical college last April as an example of how social networking can work. University authorities and police were using radios and telephones to keep up with events and respond, but meanwhile the students posted status reports on their MySpace and Facebook pages ? message such as ?I?m all right? or ?I?m safe.? For these young people and their friends, the online social network had become a fundamental way of ?catching up? ? of making sure that the elements of their world are in place, and as they should be.

None of this solves the burning question of the time for my profession, of course. Where do professional journalists fit in all this? Where will the money come from to make sure that there are still independent media watchdogs, with all that implies for democracy?

Perhaps LinkedIn provides the answer. Social networking might increase the sizes of the niches into which the media organizations of the future will fit. It might even make them viable.

The job ad of the future might read:

?Journalist for hire. What do you want investigated? Who do you want to see interviewed? What about some expert analysis, just for you and your group? Get a group of your friends together and hire me. Reasonable rates.? ?

Margaret Simons?s latest book, The Content Makers: Understanding the Media in Australia, is published by Penguin.