How are Social Network Sites Embedded in the Web? An Exploratory Link Analysis
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Social networking sites like MySpace represent a new and powerful communication technology, rivalling even \ncommercial search engines in terms of total visits. There is hence a need to understand how these sites \nrelate to the rest of the Web. For this study, links to the U.S. top twenty social network sites were gathered \nfrom commercial search engines and investigated using an information science link analysis. Quantitative \nmethods were used to compare counts of links to the sites, associated top-level domains, and common \nsources and types of links. The results showed that social network sites were embedded significantly \ndifferently in the Web in terms of national and education-related profiles of links in the Web as well as the \ntotal number of links. Although only 13% of links targeted useful information or discussion, this still \nrepresents a large number of information-related links. Social networks also attracted marketing attention \nfrom the entertainment industry, with links to fan sites and groups being common, and commercial links \nrepresenting about a third of all links. In conclusion, although often designed primarily for socialising, social \nnetwork sites are a complex and evolving phenomenon that support information provision to some extent, \nand can support new forms of discussion, marketing and customer connections
Author: Mike Thelwall
Institution: University of Wolverhampton
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W176906168