New Report on Social Networks and Privacy

George Needham, OCLC's Vice-President of Member Services, was at NEFLIN on August 1 and previewed this report. Now we get to see the final version.

Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Network World is a very interesting read. The Report Highlights section gives you some nice bite-size nuggets to chew on:

The Web community has migrated from using the Internet to building it. In 2005, just 16% of respondents used blogs; today that number approaches 50%. Approximately a quarter of the general public respondents have created Web pages and used chat rooms and social networking sites. The Internet’s readers are rapidly becoming its authors.

The emergence of a new classification of “social” Web sites is changing the construction and culture of the Web. In these shared spaces, users are not only the audience, but they create content, design pages and architect entirely new social networks. We have moved from an Internet built by a few thousand authors to one constructed by millions.

The general public respondents are more likely to have used a social networking or social media site (28%) than to have searched for or borrowed items from a library Web site (20%).

Much of what takes place on social spaces is motivated by a desire to increase personal interaction. My friends use the same site (66%) is the top criteria in using a social networking site. To network or to meet new people, The Web site is fun and to be part of a group or community are also top social networking site selection criteria.