1. Trends, Cautions and Opportunities
in Social Media
Dr. Cliff Lampe
Department of Telecommunication, Information
Studies and Media
College of Communication Arts and Sciences

2. Cliff Lampe
Professor in TISM
PhD in Information
from $@(&@!#
Science of the socio-
technical

4. What is social media?

7. Common characteristics
User generated content
Direct user-to-user interaction
Bundles of applications

8. Some fun examples of
social media

15. Some current trends

16. 8% of online Americans
use Twitter
4% use location based
services
71% seek health info
online
93% of college students
use Facebook

21. Social Media Myths

22. Myth:
Social media sites are just for teens.

23. Myth:
All we have to do is create the site,
and people will fill in the content.

24. Myth:
You can’t trust the information
in sites like Wikipedia

25. Myth:
Social media is a fad

26. What are social network sites?
A nerdy definition

29. Types of SNS
Social communication
Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, SkyRock
Business solutions
Beehive, LinkedIn
Content creation
Flickr, Fotolog, Last.fm
Mobilization
Mybarackobama, care2give, modestneeds
Cultural affinity
Blackplanet, migente, asianavenue
Interest affinity
MyChurch, Couchsurfing, librarything, PatientsLikeMe

30. Social Network Sites
Profile
List of Friends
Ability to see the Friends of others

36. Common
Concerns
about Social
Network Sites

37. Privacy

41. In reality...
Very few negative stories (that don’t involve true
stupidity)
Privacy controls are actually powerful and available
We tend to sell our privacy for cookies
Facebook knows to wait out the storm

42. The meaning of “Friends”

44. In reality...
People are mostly “friending” people they know
SNS is most useful for casual friends, rather than close
friends
Reduces cost of maintaining a broader, deeper
network

45. This is all just frivolous.

46. In reality...
Never underestimate the value of frivolity
There are *many* types of uses of SNS, some very
serious
Don’t forget the wide ecology of social network sites

48. SNS Research at MSU

50. Academic Publications
Lampe, C., Wash, R., Velasquez, A., & Ozkaya, E. (2010) Motivations to Participate in
Online Communities. In the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems (CHI) (Atlanta, GA 2010
Lampe, C., & Ellison, N. (2010). Student athlete use of Facebook. In Proceedings of the
2010 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2010).
Ellison, N., Lampe, C., Steinfield, C., & Vitak, J. (in press). With a little help from my Friends:
Social network sites and social capital. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), The networked self:
Identity, community and culture on social network sites. New York: Routledge.
Ganley, D. and Lampe, C. 2009. The ties that bind: Social network principles in online
communities. Decis. Support Syst. 47, 3 (Jun. 2009), 266-274.
Steinfield, C., DiMicco, J. M., Ellison, N. B., & Lampe, C. (2009). "Bowling Online: Social
Networking and Social Capital within the Organization." Proceedings of the Fourth
Communities and Technologies Conference.

52. Some social media
excursions at MSU

57. Thanks!
Cliff Lampe
lampecli@msu.edu
Twitter: @clifflampe