[Air-L] Number of SNSs users are active in.

[David Gurzick]

Emma (and others),

Though I think the Wired article focused more on college age students, I'll
throw out this information from a study of secondary-school students to add
to the discussion.

Earlier this summer in a workshop at C&T, I gave some preliminary results
from a survey of teenagers enrolled in a new media-based online community
funded by the NICHD (n: 71, avg. age: 16 yrs., avg. grade 10th). In one
section of the survey the teens were asked to report the number of online
communities where they currently maintain a profile (with maintain meaning
visit or update on a weekly basis).  We found that the average number of
online community profile profiles per teen was 2.6 (std dev 1.5), with 46%
saying that they maintain more than two online community profiles and 18%
reporting having profiles in four or more online communities. I would
suspect that this number is on the low side, as the teens self-reported this
number and I would also hazard that the number they reported was also
influenced by their perception of whether we would share this information
with their parents (though it was clearly specified that we would not, the
teens had to provide their parent/guardian information so that we could
approve their participation in our online community), and also based on
their perception of what an online community/profile is. Another confounding
factor came from looking at the communities the teens actually reported. We
found that several of the teenagers reported having several profiles in the
same online community (such as having three MySpace pages).


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David Gurzick                             E-Mail: gurzick1 at umbc.edu
Ph.D. Student                             AIM:    dgurzick
Information Systems Department            Tel:    301.514.5156
University of Maryland, Baltimore County  userpages.umbc.edu/~gurzick1
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On 8/24/07 10:51 AM, "Emma Duke-Williams" <emma.dukewilliams at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I've just been reading Wired's article about SNS for Students and Marc
> Canter was quoted as saying that the average user was active in 5
> Social Networks. I wasn't entired sure if they meant "5 communities"
> or "5 websites", but, given that they then went on to list 5 sites, I
> guess it was the latter.
> (http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/student_networks
> )
> 
> I've found (I think!) Canter's blog ( http://marc.blogs.it/) but can't
> seem to find anything about the numbers of active networks.
> 
> I was rather surprised to read the 5, clearly the definition of
> "active" could vary, I'm sure my MySpace account that I signed up for
> ages ago doesn't count, but I wouldn't call myself active on Facebook
> either (login perhaps once a fortnight, don't actively add friends,
> delete requests from those I don't recognise etc).
> 
> I'm also assuming that he's not counting things like forums, which
> are, in effect, a community, but again, I could be wrong.
> 
> Does anyone else have any evidence (published or anecdotal) to support
> or otherwise Canter's claim?
> 
> Emma
>