Characterization of facebook users

Characterization of users of Online Social Networks

Debesh Majumdar2nd Year StudentVGSOM, IIT Kharagpur April 29, 2011

Project Approach

• Literature review from major journals• Secondary sources of data• Primary data source• Observations• References

Why OSN?

Characteristics of OSNs

• User basedo Built and directed by users themselveso Users populate the network with content and conversationso Direction of content is determined by anyone who takes part in

the discussiono Unpredictability of direction makes it dynamic and exciting

• Interactiveo Presence of network based gaming applications alongside forums

and chatroomso These applications allow users to connect with other users and

have fun• Community-driven

o Users having common beliefs or interests create communitieso New connections between users are formed based on these

commonalities

Characteristics of OSNs

• Relationshipso Number of connections of users determine the user's distance

from the centre of the networko Content published by a user proliferates exponentially as the

number of contacts increases• Emotion over content

o OSNs provide an easy way to reach out to a large number of friends

o Certain sense of emotional security as friends are within easy reach

o Ability to communicate inner feelings with friends provides a great deal of support

Classification of users

• Singletons o Degree-zero nodes who have joined the service but have never

made a connection with another usero Do not actively participate in the network

• Giant componentso Represent the large group of people who are connected to one

another through paths in the networko Typically connected directly or indirectly to a large fraction of the

entire networko Contains most of the highly active and gregarious individuals

• Middle regiono Consists of various isolated communitieso Small groups who interact with one another but not with the

network at largeo Represents a significant fraction of the entire population

Insights into evolution of OSNs

• Likelihood that two isolated communities will merge together is low

• Almost all isolated communities are starso A star is a single charismatic individual linked to a varying

number of other users who have very few other connections

• Evolution of stars characterized by two processeso Isolated communities grow one user at a time o Either merge into the giant component or cease to exist

when the star loses focus• Merging stars represent the outer layer of a giant component• A group of tightly-connected active members form the core

of a giant component• The average distance between users in a giant component

falls over time

User Content Generation

• User posting behaviour of original content shows strong daily and weekly patterns while non-original content posting do not exhibit any temporal pattern

• Users can be classified into three groups according to their posting behaviour - steadily posting, occasionally posting and inactively posting

• 20% users contribute to 80% of the total content in the network

• User contribution for original content characterized by stretched exponential model with different parameters. For example, for high-quality content the distribution has a low stretch factor indicating that it is generated by a small core group

OSN use and personality

• OSN use can provide a lot of data about the personality of an individual

• Extrovert individuals have a significantly higher number of connections than introvert individuals

• Extrovert individuals demonstrate a lower use of personal information

• Highly neurotic individuals prefer to post more photos• People with low and high levels of agreeableness are

inclined to upload more pictures than people with a moderate level of agreeableness

• Individuals having high degree of openness to experience use more features from the personal information section

• Conscientious individuals have a higher number of friends but make less use of the picture upload feature

What do users ask their social network?

Question type Question topic

Recommendation Technology

Opinion Entertainment

Factual knowledge Home & family

Rhetorical Professional

Invitation Places

Motivation for Q&A in OSN

Questions Answers

Trust Altruism

Subjectivity of question Expertise

Belief that search engines would not work

Properties of question

Specific audience Nature of relationship

Connect socially Connect socially

Relationship Strength

• Relationship strength is modelled on the basis of the theory of homophily which postulateso People tend to form ties with other people who have

similar characteristicso Stronger the ties, higher the similarities

• Elements used to measure relationship strengtho School and university attendedo Companies worked foro Geographical location

Revenue Models of OSNs

Lengthen the tail

Fatten the tail

Drive demand down the tail

Disclosures

• Personal information can be classified intoo Default/standardo Sensitiveo Potentially stigmatizing

• Approximately 25% of all possible information that could potentially be disclosed by individuals are disclosed

• Disclosure of personal information such as gender and age is related to disclosure of other sensitive and highly personal information

• Younger people have more personal information on their profiles

• Users seeking a relationship tend to disclose the greatest amount of highly sensitive information

Privacy taxonomy

• Purpose• Specification of legitimate reasons to access a specific piece of

information• Visibility

• Who is allowed to access provided data• Granularity

• Degree of precision that is revealed in response to a query for a piece of data

• Retention• The time period during which access to data should be allowed

• Registration• Information required to identify data provider uniquely

• Networking• Information solicited by the social network to be released to its other

users• Content

• Actual content with which the data provider participates in network• Activity

• Web server logs, information from cookies, as well as other means

Legends

Purpose Visibility Granularity

RSm=Reuse Same H=House S=Specific

RS=Reuse selected F=Friends P=Partial

RA=Reuse Any FoF=Friends of friends

A=Any N=Network

A/W=All/World

Purpose

Purpose LinkedIn Twitter Orkut Facebook MySpace YouTube

Registration RA RA RSm RA RS RA

Networking A A A RAA A A

Content A A A RAA A A

Activity RS RS A RA A A

Visibility

Visibility LinkedIn Twitter Orkut Facebook MySpace YouTube

Registration H H H H H H

Networking FAW FAW FN HN FAW AW

Content FAW FAW FN HN FAW AW

Activity H H H H H H

Granularity

Visibility LinkedIn Twitter Orkut Facebook MySpace YouTube

Registration S S S S S S

Networking S,P S,P S S S S

Content S S,P S S S S

Activity P P S S S S

Facebook Applications & Privacy

• What information does Facebook share with applications?o Practically everything ...o Application Terms of Service

"Facebook may...provide developers access to...your name, your profile picture, your gender, your birthday, your hometown location...your current location...your political view, your activities, your interests...your relationship status, your dating interests, your relationship interests, your summer plans, your Facebook user network affiliations, your education history, your work history,...copies of photos in your Facebook Site photo albums...a list of user IDs mapped to your Facebook friends."

o If you set your profile to private and one of your friends adds an application, most of your profile information that is visible to your friend is also available to the application developer -- even if you yourself have not installed the application

o

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9854409-46.html#ixzz1KPfjrGfo

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9854409-46.html#ixzz1KPfjrGfo

Information needs of Facebook apps

• 90.7% applications being given more privileges than they need

Source : http://www.cs.virginia.edu/felt/privacy/

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/felt/privacy/

Facebook's changing privacy policies

2005"No personal information that you submit to the Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings."

Implications• We are not giving your data to anyone who is not related to you in some way


2006"We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about."

Implications• We will provide everyone will some of the details you add to your profile page.


2007"Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings."

Implications• Apart from some of the profile information becoming public, we will allow people to search for

you and display those information


November 2009"Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings. You should review the default privacy settings and change them if necessary to reflect your preferences. You should also consider your settings whenever you share information. ...Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings."Implications• Your profile data is no longer limited to Facebook users. It can be accessed by search engines

and others "without privacy limitations"


December 2009"Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings."Implications• Some of the information you provide is now public. There is no way you can have any setting to

make them private.


April 2010"When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. ... The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” ... Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection."

Implications• Any interaction you have with an application or an external website will help the application or

website to access to your and your friends' profile information.

Facebook’s Privacy Policy Statement

• Word count over the years

20051004

2006

2313

2007

3063

2009

5443

2010

5830

Facebook's Privacy Policy Statement

• Comparison with other OSNs

Current Facebook privacy settings

Categories of OSN applications

Category Description

Friend comparisonAllow users to declare best friends

and compare friend traits

Casual communicationAllow users to exchange messages

and write on each other's wall

Rating/RecommendationEnables users to review, compare

and recommend items

GesturesAllows users to perform virtual

gestures like poke and bite

Self expressionEnables users to express moods,

political opinion etc

Gifting Enables users to exchange gifts

Average Age Distribution

Age Distribution per site

Average user per site

Average user per site

Observations

• The average social network user is 37 years old• LinkedIn has an average user age of 44• The average Twitter user is 39 years old• The average Facebook user is 38 years old• Most importantly, unlike popular perception, OSNs are

dominated by middle-aged people and not by the tech-savvy younger generation

Social Games – Look who’s playing

Why are people playing?

Disclosures on OSNs

Who is spending the most time on OSN?

Profile of virtual world users

The Hypothesis

H0 : Classification based on number of years in Facebook and the number of hours spent each week on Facebook are independent

H1 : Classification based on number of years in Facebook and the number of hours spent each week on Facebook are not independent

The Hypothesis

Number of hours spent per week

Total Expected cell frequencies per null hypothesis

Less than 5 hours

More than 5 hours

Number of years

More than 1 year

11 42 53 15.55 37.45

Less than 1 year

11 11 22 6.45 15.55

Total 22 53 75

The Tests

Chi Square

X2For 97.5%

6.41 5.02

Therefore we can say that number of years on FB and number of hours spent are not independent with a confidence level of 97.5%

References

• "Structure & evolution of Online Social Networks"o Ravi Kumar, Jasmine Novak, Andrew Tomkins

• "Social network use and personality"o Yair Amichai-Hamburger, Gideon Vinitzky

• "Modelling relationship strength in Online Social Networks"o Rongjing Xiang, Jennifer Neville, Monica Rogati

• "All about me: Disclosure in Online Social Networking profile : The case of Facebook"o Amanda Nosko, Eileen Wood, Seija Molema

• "Analyzing patterns of user content generation in Online Social Networks"o Lei Guo, Enhua Tan, Songqing Chen, Xiaodong Zhang, Yihong Zhao

• The long tail of social networking sites• Albrecht Enders, Harald Hungenberg, Hans-Peter Denker

• What do people ask their social networks and why?o Meredith Ringel Morris, Jaime Teevan, Katrina Panovich

Thank You!