Networked Out: Are There Too Many Social Web Sites?

Networked Out: Are There Too Many Social Web Sites?
Sites such at MySpace and Facebook have multiplied. But time for
interacting is as scarce as ever.

Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, January 20, 2008
Story appeared in SCENE section, Page L1

http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/643294.html

You already MySpace. You're LinkedIn. Your slobbery canine even has a
page on Dogster. But how many online social networks can you be on
before it makes life too complicated?

Four, says Beth Simas, 24, a graduate student at the University of
California, Davis, who is a member of LinkedIn, Facebook,

MySpace and inCircle, a community for Santa Clara University alumni.

"I don't even keep up with the ones I'm in. I rarely log on to all
four during the month - it just takes too much time," says Simas, who
dumps other network invitations.

If we aren't already cyber-networked out, we're hitting online
networking fatigue as we navigate the plethora of new social sites
dedicated to everything from divorce or paganism to firefighting or
anime.

"We've only got so much time in the day, and that's what it boils down
to," says Fred Stutzman, a doctoral student at the University of North
Carolina's School of Information and Library Science. "You want to be
there with your friends, you want to hang out with them, but when
there are so many social networks, we can't really meaningfully spend
time there. And if you're not getting meaningful interactions, then
it's not all that fun."

It's only natural that social interactions today have moved to the
Web, since 65 percentof Americans spend more time with their computers
than with their significant others, according to a study by Kelton
Research and Support.com. The average visit to a social network site
lasts more than 21 minutes, up from almost 15 minutes last year,
according to Hitwise, an Internet measurement company.

And that's not counting the number of times a person visits those
sites in a day.

"The purpose of social network sites is to hang out with your
friends," says Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet
and Society at Harvard Law School.

Teenagers visit each other online because parents keep them from
seeing each other in person as often as they would like, Boyd says.
College students use sites like Facebook as a procrastination tool.
And the highest online social network usage for adults is during
weekdays, when they're supposed to be working, Boyd says.

MySpace and Facebook continue to dominate social networking - MySpace
maintains about 72 percent of the market share and Facebook holds 16
percent, says Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise.

Other social Web sites - such as Bebo, BlackPlanet, ClubPenguin,
GaiaOnline, myYearbook, hi5, Classmates and Yahoo!360 - each claim
about 1 percent or less of the market, she says.

So, how do you decide where to spend your time?

It's all about organizing your socializing, says Stutzman of the
University of North Carolina. People hang out mostly at what Stutzman
calls "egocentric social networks" such as Facebook and MySpace, and
then go to niche sites that center on eating, music or traveling when
they're looking for a good restaurant or a new band, or perhaps
planning a trip.

"There are these profiles where we spend most of our time and we have
these others that serve a purpose or fulfill a need," he says. "So you
can have a profile there, but you probably don't spend all day every
day there as you would on MySpace."

If John Foley were to look for a birthday present for his wife, he
would click around Pronto.com, the social shopping site, and look for
someone with a similar style for ideas on what to get, he says.

The Web site is vertically focused and useful, not meant to compete
with Web sites focused on "gratuitous communication," says Foley, who
serves as the site's president.

"People don't go to Pronto every day like they do Facebook, but they
do go to Pronto when they're shopping, to see what people like," he
says.

But social networking simply to network still fulfills a purpose of
staying connected - so connected that you know the minute your friends
and acquaintances who live thousands of miles away update their
profiles.

"Five hundred friends, that's not real. But we can have 500 contacts,
people we've met who can provide some sort of value at some time,"
Stutzman says. "And to be able to keep them a few mouse clicks away is
interesting - it's social capital, and that's important for things
like getting a job."

While MySpace still commands the numbers, some believe users are
letting their profiles idle there while moving to Facebook, which
increased its market share last year by 51 percent (from almost 11
percent to more than 16 percent, while MySpace's went from 79 percent
to 72 percent), according to Hitwise.

That movement is much like how people change the regular bars they go
to during their lives, says Harvard's Boyd.

"You care more often than not about where your friends are than the
bar itself. Social network sites look a lot like that," she says.
"These online spaces in a way are digital models of these social
spheres we're used to. ... It's like going to a new bar - you have to
learn what the different drinks are - but big deal, most of it looks
the same."

Still, the usefulness of MySpace didn't outweigh the time and effort
it took to maintain the profile for Ila Zapanta of Sacramento.

She deleted her profile a few weeks ago.

"I just came to the point where for a while, I stopped using it and I
realized I didn't miss it," she says. "It was too time consuming."

Zapanta, 26, a sales manager at Raging Waters, is still on LinkedIn to
maintain her business contacts, but isn't sorry about saying goodbye
to MySpace.

"MySpace is beneficial for bands, businesses and 16-year-olds," she
says. "As an adult with real responsibilities and limited time, I'd
rather use my time elsewhere - I'd rather have a real conversation
with someone face to face, or hang out for coffee or watch a game
together.

"And to be honest, anyone you really want to keep in touch with, you
will keep in touch with them."

That doesn't include all 80 of her MySpace friends.

"Some of those people who were my friends on MySpace weren't really my
friends in real life," she says. "I wouldn't tell them all personal
stuff, and if I was having a birthday party, I wouldn't invite them
all."