Scott GreerPopular Culture 106-220Dr. Rowan Wilken6 June 2008

Social Networking and Its Impact on Popular Culture

Concurrent with the rapid expansion of the Internet over the past several years, the practice of “social networking” has become a widespread phenomenon that will inevitably continue to flourish throughout the 21st century. Mark Zuckerberg and Chris DeWolfe, respective CEOs of Facebook and MySpace, are the leaders of an online revolution that has permanently changed the way people communicate and share information with one another. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 20051 and quickly developed it to become the fifth most trafficked website in the United States.2 This instantaneous evolution, occurring over the course of just three years, has allowed the company to grow at a rate three times faster than top competitor MySpace this year.3 In addition, upon landing a $240 million advertising deal with Microsoft in 2007,4 Facebook became an even greater financial powerhouse and has thereby challenged MySpace to search for new innovations within the world of social networking. As a result of this massive competition between these two giant corporations, popular culture has never been produced and distributed so widely across the world. However, as Facebook and MySpace continue to grow, they are starting to impact society in a negative way by prioritizing monetization and advertising over human nature and social interaction. Before transforming into a corporate entity, Facebook was merely a system for university students to stay in touch with high school classmates and college friends alike. Initially a basic form of “cultural participation and self-representation,”5 the website at this point had yet to become an uncontrollable way of life. Therefore, during its early stages, Facebook served as an inexpensive and effective tool for the online distribution of knowledge, information, and creativity.6 In describing his main purpose for creating the website, Zuckerberg has stated that he wanted to establish a more efficient means of communication between friends—hence his preference for the term “social utility” rather than “social network.”7 Just as the telephone and computer allowed for people to contact

1 ‘Facebook, Inc. Company Profile’, Yahoo! Finance, 2008, accessed 23 May 2008, from <http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/148/148344.html>.

2 ‘Top Sites: United States’, Alexa: The Web Information Company, accessed 27 May 2008, from <http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=US&ts_mode=country&lang=none>.

3 Locke, Laura, ‘The Future of Facebook’, TIME Magazine, 17 July 2007, accessed 26 May 2008,from <http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1644040,00.html>.

4 MacManus, Richard, ‘Microsoft Beats Google on Facebook Deal; Valuation $15 Billion’,ReadWriteWeb, 24 October 2007, accessed 28 May 2008, from <http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_beats_google_to_facebook_deal.php>.

5 Burgess, Jean, ‘Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling’, Continuum: Journal of Medium & Cultural Studies, 20:2, June (2006): 204.

6 Burgess 206.7 Locke.

each other from distant geographical locations, Zuckerberg’s discovery has accomplished that same feat in the cheapest and most user-friendly way possible. By establishing an “altogether new condition of neighborliness,”8 this website has prompted consumer advertisers to gain the ability to target massive audiences and specific demographics.9 As a result of the Microsoft contract and the accumulation of 150,000 new members each day,10 Facebook will gradually make the transition from a mere “social utility” into a dominant online marketing machine.

Though the competition has clearly become fierce, MySpace is nonetheless the top social networking and third most visited website in the United States.11 With a central focus on new media,12 the original idea behind MySpace was to circulate the work of aspiring musicians and filmmakers to potential fans across the country. When Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace in 2005, the company showed remarkable success as its total revenues increased from $23 million that year to $800 million in July 2007.13 Despite its impressive numbers, however, the site has received much criticism from social networking fans for having excessive spamming, poor layout design, slow page navigation and ineffective media links.14 Though MySpace reigns supreme statistically amongst social networking websites, many users would argue that the Internet has better places for online communication. In fact, the endless competition supports the fact that MySpace “continues to be hammered by criticism of its privacy and safety practices.”15 The emergence of such competitors, namely Facebook, illustrates that the social networking business has a bright future with a vast amount of potential. Though these sites share a great deal in common with one another, the practice of consumer advertising will be the key to success for any social networking company.16 Facebook and MySpace are currently the most powerful players in this business, but critics would surely argue that anyone is capable of winning—and “the only sure losers…will be the consumer Internet companies that pretend it’s all just a passing fad.”17

In disproving the social networking phenomenon as a passing fad, one must understand its profound level of usefulness within popular culture and everyday life. Seeing as communication has always been a necessary part of society, the social

8 Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Public Culture, 2:2 (1990): 2.

9 Kirkpatrick, David, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’, Fortune Magazine, 19 September 2007, accessed 17 May 2008, from <http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/18/technology/myspace_strikes.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007091906>.

10 Locke.11 ‘Top Sites: United States’.12 Kirkpatrick, David, ‘Where MySpace and Facebook Are Headed’, Fortune Magazine, 21

September 2007, accessed 17 May 2008, from <http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/21/technology/myspace.fortune/index.htm>.

13 Kirkpatrick, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’.14 Gold, Ben, ‘Facebook Hammers MySpace on Almost All Key Features’, Mashable: The Social

Networking Blog, 10 June 2007, accessed 23 May 2008, from <http://mashable.com/2007/06/10/facebook-hammers-myspace-on-almost-all-key-features/>.

15 Kirkpatrick, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’.16 Stone, Brad, ‘Facebook Expands Into MySpace’s Territory’, The New York Times, 25 May

2007, accessed 15 May 2008, from <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/technology/25social.html?_r=l&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print>.

17 Kirkpatrick, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’.

networking websites effectively make this practice simpler than ever. In turn, every piece of information on the Internet becomes accessible to the entire public through the use of improved digital tools for production and distribution.18 Furthermore, such tools have allowed for ordinary people to express their creativity and share information that may not even exist on the Internet. Though the online world seems to be more massive than ever before, the distribution of knowledge on the Internet becomes more widespread each day. As of May 2007, Facebook and MySpace had gathered a collective total of approximately 91 million members.19 This astounding number, which has only increased over the past year, reflects the reality that this business will forever prosper as long as the figures keep growing at a steady pace. Also, since the general goal of every social networking company is to continue expanding its online community, it seems highly unlikely that these numbers will begin to drop or slow down anytime soon.

Though Zuckerberg had intended Facebook to strictly serve as a utility for college students, he decided to open up the community to non-students in October 2006 when the company finally realized the amazing potential of such a website.20 As a result, the network expanded into high school, regional, and national communities, and even began to allow people to join under the category “no network.” Upon making this decision, it became evident that Zuckerberg had switched his focus for monetary rather than social reasons. Therefore, with the website allowing for essentially anyone in the world to become a member, people started adding friends in a much more unrestrictive manner. In addition to increasing the likelihood of spam and hackers, the website became much more closely associated with MySpace and less so with the idea of merely staying in touch with old friends. In September 2007, for instance, American politicians Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had a combined 310,000 “friends” on their MySpace pages,21 and now the same people will be able to “friend” them on Facebook. This transition, in turn, gives each website a more meaningful significance in the online world than the real world. In other words, although oridinary people could technically become more “popular” by adding anyone and everyone as a friend on Facebook, this practice would be unreflective of the network’s genuine purpose. In an essay on the digital revolution and its cultural influence, Jean Burgess writes: “This specifically fetishized and aestheticized version of everyday life is not the territory in which we can look for the spaces where ‘ordinary’ people can exercise meaningful agency.”22

When applying an excessive amount of significance on social networking, people become disconnected from society and therefore consumed by pop culture to the point where it truly dehumanizes the human being. For example, when ordinary people achieve celebrity status by posting a video on YouTube that receives hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions of views, they have not actually become celebrities because “they remain within the system of celebrity that is native to and controlled by the mass media.”23 And though one can do the same within the realm of Facebook or MySpace, it is essential for people to realize that the online world will always exist apart from the real world. Therefore, while an online video may garner attention and create

18 Burgess 210.19 Stone.20 Stone.21 Kirkpatrick, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’.22 Burgess 205.23 Burgess 203.

seemingly genuine friendships between fellow users, it is nothing more than a piece of media that ultimately disguises the underlying dehumanization and alienation caused by the invention of the Internet.24 However, as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube become more popular each day, this disguise becomes less transparent and illustrates that technology has mildly interfered with the growth of contemporary society. Though it may seem beneficial that knowledge and pop culture can spread more rapidly today, people must realize that social networking websites pose a major threat to social communication and verbal interaction.

In a capitalist nation like the United States, a successful business only becomes more successful with money. Zuckerberg, therefore, goes into work each day and diligently searches for new ways to make his company even more successful.25 In a decision to allow ordinary people to act as Facebook employees by developing their own applications,26 he launched the Facebook Platform in May 2007.27 These new developers, ranging from “the largest software companies to dorm-room hackers,”28 have created thousands of applications in the past year and new ones appear online each day. As of 1 June 2008, the Facebook site had 26,951 available applications divided amongst twenty-two subcategories.29 In a description of the Platform’s overall purpose, the Facebook website reads: “With millions of users and billions of connections, our network is growing stronger every day. With our tools, you can build applications that Facebook users can spread and quickly distribute worldwide.”30 As a result of this mass distribution, the site accumulated an average total of 40 billion pages views per month in 2007.31 However, though the company seems to suggest that the Facebook Platform effectively promotes the circulation of knowledge and valuable information, the category entitled “Just for Fun” contains the vast majority of applications with 10,729 total.32 This number may imply that many applications are essentially useless, but it also illustrates that the Facebook Platform has succeeded as one of the best online mechanisms for distributing advertisements and entertainment to the masses.

While it may serve as an extremely effective medium for the circulation of pop culture, Facebook is also a product of pop culture in and of itself. Therefore, it seemed inevitable that Zuckerberg would eventually turn to advertising to enhance the flow of information and profit from third-party advertisers and Facebook members alike.33 And though MySpace sold an estimated total of $400 million more than Facebook through advertising in 2007,34 Facebook’s recent deal with Microsoft has ensured that the company is headed in the right direction. In fact, Zuckerberg predicts that the future will

24 Appadurai 16.25 Locke.26 Locke.27 Kirkpatrick, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’.28 Kirkpatrick, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’.29 ‘The Facebook Blog’, Facebook, 2008, accessed 1 June 2008, from <http://blog.facebook.com>.30 ‘Facebook Developers’, Facebook, 2007, accessed 28 May 2008, from

<http://developers.facebook.com>.31 Locke.32 ‘The Facebook Blog’.33 Rampell, Catherine, ‘What Facebook Knows That You Don’t’, The Washington Post, 23

February 2008, A15, accessed 20 May 2008, from <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022202630.html>.Post,

34 Kirkpatrick, ‘As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back’.

bring “more ways for advertisers to reach people and communicate in a very natural way, just like users communicate with each other.”35 Even today, the company has begun using profile information to produce advertisements that appear on each page specifically targeting that member’s interests, activities, and other details.36 With a privacy policy that has been referred to as “disturbingly cryptic,”37 Facebook actually maintains the right to access anyone’s profile details even after that person has deactivated his or her account: “Most people who perfunctorily fill out social networking forms don’t understand the privacy risks… Consumers, plain and simple, are too unsophisticated to realize what can be done with their data.”38

While Facebook allows people to join the network for free on a daily basis, it also subversively targets these people with products and promotions that relate directly to their specific personality traits. Therefore, as ironic as it may seem, the site encourages each member of the community to express his or her individualism whilst participating within the conformist world of social networking. Furthermore, the company has recently expanded internationally and nearly become a required practice for young adults to communicate with their friends. In fact, Zuckerberg claims that as much as “10% or 15% of the population of Canada”39 has a Facebook account, and these numbers are obviously continuing to grow quickly. With Zuckerberg believing that the website is now “broadly applicable” to virtually every nation across the globe,40 Facebook has expanded on a universal level and has the potential to become one of the most widespread practices in the world.

Despite its deceptive advertising techniques, Facebook has arguably formed the Internet’s most efficient system for sharing knowledge and creativity on the planet. This new brand of mass media transforms its members into both consumers and citizens,41 each of which affects the company in an entirely unique manner. Ali Partovi, one of the company’s main entrepreneurs, expressed his viewpoint about the site’s new direction: “We are truly building an entire business within Facebook.”42 The business, however, will only thrive if its members continue to share their knowledge and practice the art of “digital storytelling.”43 In other words, the creative nature that exists at Facebook’s core is ultimately the only real expression of individuality and nonconformity within this massive social network:

When we do listen, we begin to realize that if ‘ordinary’ people have the opportunity to create content for public consumption for the first time, they choose to use this opportunity to talk about what the serious business of the human experience—life, loss, belonging, hope for the future, friendship and love—mean to them. The themes of digital stories may be ‘universal’, but by definition the specificities of individual lives never are.44

35 Locke.36 Kirkpatrick, ‘Where Facebook and MySpace Are Headed’.37 Rampell. 38 Rampell.39 Locke.40 Locke.41 Burgess 201.42 Stone.43 Burgess 211.44 Burgess 212.

While this passage may suggest that storytelling can steer people away from the universality of Facebook and MySpace, it also implies that the public must be intelligent enough to appreciate this sharing of the human experience.

Regardless of how many people try to fight the system, social networking sites have gained more power than the users that comprise each community. The average person, therefore, will usually end up submitting to the advertisers and their powerful ability to use personal interests for profitable purposes. David Kirkpatrick, senior editor of Fortune Magazine, has heard ideas about countless new online communities targeting specific audiences, including networking sites for scholars, stock traders, attorneys, middle-aged adults and even “emo-social” people looking for “a communal grieving space.”45 Though ordinary people can communicate with one another online and truly appreciate the miracle of the human experience, Facebook and MySpace have permanently directed their focus to the business side of the equation, transforming each website into a global tool for advertising and financial gain.

45 Kirkpatrick, ‘Where Facebook and MySpace Are Headed’.