DISSERTATION

Course: DMP (BA) 2009-10

Tutor: G.Lee
Student: Yago Mateos

An investigation into Social

Networking and it’s affect on online
business.

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Index

1.0 – Abstract Page 3

2.0 - Introduction Page 3

3.0 - Literature Review Pages, 4,5,6,7

4.0 - Methodology Pages, 7, 8

5.0 – Findings and Discussion Pages 8, 9

5.1 – Analysis of findings Pages 8, 9

5.2 Discussion Pages 9, 10, 11

6.0 - Conclusion Pages 11, 12

7.0 -Bibliography Pages 13, 14

8.0 -Acknowledgments Page 14

9.0-Appendix Pages 14, 15, 16

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1.0- Abstract
An investigation into how social networking affects businesses has been discussed
within several categories: The erosion of the boundaries between personal and
professional with social networking, the Identity of people using social networks and
Social networking as a useful tool. All of these categories correspond to each other
and a survey has been made to discuss the analysis of the data between varying
opinions. The dialogue will offer ideas on how social networking is useful for an
online business, how privacy of professionals might be compromised and the opinion
of the public.

2.0 - Introduction
Social media networking sites are a great place to meet people and let them know
who you are and what you do. However, taking this approach must be carefully
handled as the hard-sell approach is not appropriate in a social space. In order to
successfully promote yourself and your online business it is now necessary to have a
personal approach and in doing this you are open to being assessed personally and
be open about what many from generation X and from previous generations have
enjoyed as being private (Qualman, 2009, p119). Opening up one’s personal life to
the professional realm can be problematic as whilst it can demonstrate that you are
genuine, for many this may also mean that they are open to harsh subjective
judgement on personal matters. Online businesses will have to address this problem.
This could indicate that that the future attitudes and the way that we judge others will
have to change or it could simply be a case of greater control on what we allow to be
published to social networking sites.
The very reason that social networking sites are so popular can be explained by
human nature and our need to feel a part of a group. There is safety in numbers and
on the internet it can sometimes be very daunting as to what information to trust,
what online services are reliable, which products are good. Social networking can be
valuable to help users to make these decisions. This is also an aspect that online
businesses are focusing much of their attention to as from here, they can learn from
their target markets, (who will have gathered into their specific categories and groups
naturally) what their needs, preferences and dislikes are. This way the companies
will not only know how to approach the groups but also will be able to create better
products that the target markets actually want and will find useful.
Social networking is a fantastic tool with many further useful tools under its wing.
They are valuable to online businesses as they a completely free and also quick and
easy to use. Online businesses can make use of updates, more accessible
communication and the creation of groups. The accessibility of communication and
the ease at which we can express ourselves online now is as never before. The
sheer quantity of people that you can be connected to and communicate with at any
one time is immense ‘Electronic tools can increase the number of active connections
each person can maintain (human limit is around 150 stable relationships, according
to some research; the increased maximum is not known)’ (at&t, 2008, p2)

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3.0 - Literature Review
As discussed by Power, P., & Power, T., (2010) who promote merging the private
and the professional as a great way of getting people to like you and then in turn to
follow you and your business on the social networking site Twitter:
Who you are encompasses the whole you, not just your knowledge, skills
and the way you make your money. It is about things that matter to you –
your family, where you go on holiday, which causes you support. It is also
about the journey you have had in life that has enabled you to be the
expert you are. It is about why you like what you do...
...Your business is about you. People will work with you because they like
and trust you; they will talk about you if you are reliable, caring and help
others. This is about your integrity, your values, your friendship and your
ability to be part of a community. (Power, P., Power, T., 2010)
Power, P., & Power, T., (2010) positively recommend opening yourself and your
private life so that people can judge the ‘whole you’ as this will help people trust you
in business. Unfortunately letting go of having a private personal life is not something
that everyone is necessarily comfortable with, but it does seem that not having a
‘private’ life is becoming more inevitable due to the fact that there is so much
information about us easily accessible to anyone.
Thomas, J. (2008) proposed the question on LinkedIn ‘The End of Privacy?’ there
was a surprising variety of responses to his question, it appears that there is a rich
debate about privacy and strong feelings about the subject varying from people
claiming that society can’t be secure if people maintain their privacy, others fear the
loss of privacy for reasons as described by Thomas, J (2008):
Your business failed, you were ill, you got a divorce, your company laid
you off in lean times, you were financially taken advantage of. You know
what all these things do? Make it harder to get a job because your
employer can now look at your credit rating. Therefore, it actually worsens
the small mistake you made in the first place.
Unfortunately maintaining privacy is increasingly becoming harder to achieve.
Qualman (2009) warned of this as he describes this as the ‘Death of Social
Schizophrenia’ [the term Schizophrenia used here to describe the idea of dual
personas]. Qualman, whilst touching on the question of blurring the personal and
professional realm he hasn’t examined this phenomena into as great a depth as it
really deserves, nor has he really discussed the more positive side of blurring
professional and private as Power, P., & Power, T., (2010) had.
For research it would be interesting to survey the views of Facebook users who often
reveal much about their private lives, to find out their views on blurring the
distinctions between personal and private.
Another factor which might explain the success of social networking sites is human
nature itself. In a world of internationalisation and the fact that today, due to travel
and the internet, society has become a melting pot of cultures and religions, blurring
identities. It is our very human nature however to be tribal, to have a specific identity
or group to distinguish ourselves from others and feel a part of something. As

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Castells (1996) p.3 describes it; ‘In such a world of uncontrolled, confusing change,
people tend to group around primary identities: religious, ethnic, territorial, national.’
Social networking sites cater to this, allowing people to create interest groups. This
may also be beneficial to online businesses as it breaks down the masses into more
easily comprehensible entities with their own distinct rules of
conduct/religions/preferences, thus making it more simple to find your target markets
and understand their concerns and needs, which will in hand help the online
business strengthen and thrive.
Further to this, as people like to express themselves and their identity, companies
have tuned into this and in many cases now - if you purchase something online like a
game on the PlayStation Store, you can give the company permission to publish this
to your news feed so that your pears know what you have just purchased. Your piers
can then ask you your opinion of the game to gain a recommendation from you. If
you then decide the game is not very good for some reason this gives the
manufacturer a chance to improve the product ‘If the manufacturer’s marketing team
is listening and watching, they will be able to quickly share this with the design and
production team and hopefully get a quick resolution/improvement for future buyers.’
Qualman (2009) p92
It would be interesting to do a survey to find out why people join interest groups.
Additionally it would also be interesting to see whether they are active members of
that group i.e., have they ever posted information to the group or expressed their
opinion to the other members. Have they posted recommendations to their friends,
and might they in the future?
Social Networking sites make very useful, practical tools for an online business.
Instead of creating a blog and then trying to promote it, it is already there, and there
are huge quantities of people using them, moreover; they are free to use. ‘There are
currently some 10,000 applications available on Facebook, and the more popular
ones are used regularly by hundreds of thousands of people each day-not a bad
marketing tool that costs nothing to launch and is easy to create’(Meerman Scott,
2007)
Social Networking and Web 2.0 are governing all new developments in the field of
digital media. Hardware such as mobile phones, walkmans, cameras etc are all
affected by it and have to develop with them in mind in order to make maximum use
of all:
‘A whole bunch of new tools is on tap, including Social Networking, blogs,
syndication, folksonomy and wikis, rich media such as geo-localization,
webcasts and webinars, mashups, reputation systems (bookmarking and
rating), virtual world events, interactive ads, applets and widgets. Now,
simple statement about the inevitable evolution of corporate
communication needs much more complex thought regarding “how” to
implement these new types of communication,’ (at&t, 2008, p4)
Social networking is the master tool that brings together all of these subordinate tools
as it is the space where online communities dwell and make use of these facilities.
As described above, businesses will have to make the decision as to whether they
are to keep up with the changing trends in communication and use them to their full
capacities to benefit from them. There are many ways in which they can be utilised.

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Firstly they can use them to promote themselves, using amongst other tools the
social networking groups, webinars and webcasts are useful cost-effective ways of
promotion, they would just require some thought and persistence to make them
effective.
They might also want to think about how they could use them for internal
communications, could the instant messaging facility be used for example? This can
be added to mobile phones and potentially could be easier to maintain closer contact
whilst the user is out of the office. They might find that writing instant messages
rather than emails from a blackberry easier than it would be to write an email whilst
on the move. This could speed up and increase the flexibility of internal
communications and working patterns for the company which in turn would allow
them to free up more time to focus on promotion.
Social networking is a wonderful way of keeping in touch with people as it is so
simple and has a more open feel to it than an email. ‘The reason why a lot of people
use the Inbox on Facebook instead of email, for a lot of cases, is you don’t need to
know someone’s email address – you can just send it to their identity directly.’
Zuckerberg to Smith (2009) More specifically the benefit for an online business is
great as it creates fantastic opportunities to contact and communicate with your
target market and/or other people who might come in useful to your business for help
or advice in a very fluid manner:
“what it does is keep the information flow more open and also allows for a
much more deeper relationship than e-mail. I’ve started relationships and
signed contracts exclusively within social networks .It is revolutionary for
sales, it’s much easier than telephone calls and e-mails,” said Allison
Bahm of Response Mine Interactive Agency’ (Qualman, 2009)

It might be useful if Facebook could be used as a search engine, you then might be
able to search for products through the site and it could tell you if any of your friends
had bought the same, what recommendations or criticisms there have been of the
product and where best to purchase. It would be interesting to research into how
likely this is becoming – would Facebook users like to be able to search for
recommended products/and be comfortable recommending products within their
social space?
Due the massive amount of information over the internet, Social Networking is the
perfect tool to control it. ”Now we are not searching for the news, the news find us”
Qualman, (2009).
Now it is much easier to see information or news that has been recently posted, so
users will not have to keep looking for it and wasting their time. This creates a new
dynamic to the way that we receive mass media, news, etc. One example is Twitter,
one of the most successful micro-blogging sites that can allow users to exchange
information in very fast and effective way.
The influence of social media to the news and an example of just how it can be
brought to us through social networking was described in Erik Qualman (2009)
where Rick Sanchez, news commentator of CNN Newsroom decided to test out the
new medium of Twitter and begun placing his daily activities online. From there he

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started to leverage the Twitter platform to ask provoking questions such as: ‘I’m
interviewing Collin Power tonight. What would you like to know most about Iraq or
Iran’? After that Rick Sanchez had 75,000 people following in the social network. The
way that social media can attract people today is vast; it could take just fifteen
minutes to attract huge quantities of visitors.
Meerman Scott (2007) described how Philip Robertson, Director of Marketing
Communications for ooVoo ‘an application for conducting face-to-face video
conversations’ (Meerman Scott, 2007, pg 232) created a group in Facebook as a
marketing tool where they would let members or ‘fans’ of the group use their
software first. The group grew very quickly. The interesting point that (Meerman
Scott, 2007) made was that ‘The informal, two-way nature of Facebook’s group
dynamics in an important aspect for marketers.’ Meaning that you can’t spam people
as whilst you can invite people to join a group, you can’t force them to join, and once
they are in the group you should offer something that is of interest to them for them
to be a more active member or to hold their attention like the way that Philip
Robertson offered the members of the group to use the software first.

4.0 - Methodology
For the research investigation a survey was created containing questions that are
relevant to three different headings:
-The erosion of the boundaries between personal and professional with social
networking
-The Identity of people using social networks
- Social networking as a useful tool
The questionnaire was sent to users of Facebook to identify several aspects of social
networking and its possible effect/benefits and disadvantages to online businesses.
The survey was open to all, and was directly posted to about 100. The people to
whom the survey was posted directly to were from a range of age groups from
between about 17 to 40, and from a variety of different nationalities and professions.
From the people to whom the survey was sent 24 replied and there were 6 further
people (who were outside of the group of 100 to whom the survey was posted),
resulting in a total of 30 participants. Whilst the age gap between 17 and 40 years of
age is not ideal, this may be representative of the majority of the Facebook user’s
population age range.
The questions chosen specific to the headings as noted above are to establish
opinions on the theories and ideas as discussed in the literature review. See
Appendix 1 & 2.
The questions in section one were designed to evaluate how people value the idea
of privacy. There are a couple of questions designed to establish whether there may
be double standards in attitudes to this, such as people who are not open about their
own private life, but would be interested to know about another’s when it came to
dealing with them within a professional context.

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If a client were to use the services of an online business they may find it reassuring
to know something about the ‘person’ delivering the services, as they can assess
whether they are what they believe to be the right type of person for the job that they
require of you, and as to whether you are a genuine, and reliable person.
If the data reveals that people are willing to be open about their private lives to their
colleagues and clients and would be interested to learn some of the more personal
aspects to a professional who’s services/product they are contracting/purchasing,
then one could draw the conclusion that it might be advisable for online companies
to consider being more open about their personal lives amongst their colleagues and
clients. It would also be advisable evaluate how they might come across as
presented in their social networking profile and to take measures to ensure that they
exert a large amount of control in either their behaviour or what they present on the
social networking sites.
Section two seeks to establish whether the behaviour of people on social networking
sites corresponds to the theory that this is governed by human nature. In particular
the notion that people have a need to establish oneself as a part of a specific group.
If this is so, how this also may influence someone’s purchasing habits. Some people
might find they trust more in purchasing items that are recommended by a social
networking group they joined and others would rely more heavily on customer
reviews on online shopping sites. It is expected that people may purchase items to
enforce their identity as being a part of the group, to what extent would be interesting
to establish, as this may be useful information for an online business as would help
them to know and understand their target market and learn how to use the power of
recommendation within the groups.

Section three has been designed to establish which tools are particularly useful in
Facebook. The questions seek to investigate how people feel about the way in which
social networking has changed communication. In order to aid the objectives in the
creation of a social networking site that could benefit online businesses, a couple of
the questions have been designed to test whether the idea of an extra search facility
might be useful or popular to users of Facebook.

5.0 - Findings and discussion

5.1 - Analysis of findings

The questions with the greatest amount of variance in their results were questions 18
and 13 and the least variance was shown in questions 16 and 6. This shows that
most of the participants strongly agreed that in terms of accessibility, social
networking has changed communication in a positive way, and most of them also
strongly agreed that due to the amount of information and shops that Google will
retrieve for them in a search, they would tend to settle to purchase from the first
place that they find, which would usually be something that is high up on the Google
ranking.

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The questions with the least variance revealed that the participants were quite
evenly dispersed into groups who would frequently update their status with what they
were doing and those who would not, and those who would add their
employer/colleagues and clients and those who would not.
Interestingly, whilst the results reveal that the participants would not congregate into
the same category when updating their status with what they were doing, they
seemed to concur to strongly agree that they would update their status with
something that they had purchased to let people know whether they liked it or
disliked it.
The results in section one show that whilst the participants coincided on their
agreement that knowing about a professional’s private life might affect their view of
their capability to do their job. They also were mostly in accordance to agree that
they probably would prefer not to know about their private life, which may indicate
why most were not sure whether they would add their employer/colleagues or clients
as a friend on Facebook.
In section two the results expose that the participants mostly like to be a part of a
group, in particular one that their friend may have joined first. The participants also
concurred to agree that they would trust recommendations from their social
networking group rather than trusting online recommendations listed in an online
shop, the data indicated that this was largely for the reason that they didn’t know the
people who had left the reviews on the online shop but to an even greater degree it
is because most of the participants felt that the recommendations on the online
shopping website could be easily faked.
Section three in general demonstrated the most concurrences of opinions of all three
sections. The data also showed quite positive feedback on the improvement of
accessibility and quality of communication on social networking sites, perhaps this is
not so surprising since the survey was based on Facebook users. More interestingly
was that whilst most participants strongly agreed that accessibility of communication
had changed communication in a positive way, there seemed less certainty that the
quality of communication had improved. Also quite surprising was the result that
most strongly agreed that having a search facility that would track through the history
of conversations / updates of people from their networks to find whether they had
discussed a particular product or service to see if it was recommended and that they
would also be more likely to update their profile with what they had purchased than
to update it with what they are doing.

5.2 - Discussion
The erosion of the boundaries between personal and professional is increasingly
making the distance between the two realms much smaller. This is not something
that everyone is comfortable with. It appears from the research data that whilst the
participants would judge another professional on the basis of their private life, they
themselves might not like to be judged in the same way, the findings showed that
they might prefer not to know about the professional’s private life but at the same
time some degree of openness would be useful, the data also showed that the
participants would trust people they know more so than they would to a stranger as it

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is not always easy to tell who is genuine from those who aren’t from the millions of
online businesses and professionals. Perhaps also the response that they would
rather not know the professional’s private life may be because they themselves
would not want to be judged in the same way. Such was the reaction of Thomas, J
(2008) as mentioned in the literature review.
As social networking has only been around within the last 10 years with increasing
popularity over the last 5 we are still learning how to use it effectively. Social
networking sites are also continuingly responding to the developing needs of the
users, often finding that they need to exert more control. It is advisable for an online
business to think carefully about being more open about who they are as this may
not only attract people as they will be able to see more clearly that they are genuine.
They will also be able to see that they are well-rounded individuals who can form
part of and contribute to a community which are also good qualities.
Here we have looked at how at present, people are still concerned about privacy and
how they might judge a counsellor as less qualified to deal with their personal issues
if they have unsolved personal issues of their own. In the future, it could be that
people are going to be more used to the fact that they are going to have to let go of
their previously enjoyed privacy, people may enjoy (as they already seem to be
doing so) being more open about their personal life and find that privacy loses its
meaning and value.
Online businesses must not ignore the power of social groups which is the very
reason why social networking has become so popular. People like to feel like they
are a part of a group/nationality/religion as it helps them come to terms with a
confusing world.
Without social networking the internet would be too immense for people to approach
as with its increasing quantity of professional entrepreneurs, online businesses of
shops and services there is also an ever increasing quantity of fraud, people who
aren’t who they say that they are and those who are just using it to create problems
for internet users such as viruses, such people do this just because they can and it
can give them a feeling of power. Social networking can link people and within the
communities there is strength in numbers and greater possibility to make sense of
the immenseness of information that the internet has become.
The research has shown that the way that people have gained control and power
over the mass of information is that they can help each other. It is apparent from the
findings that users will rely strongly on recommendations to help aid their decision on
what companies or products they should spend their money on. This is due to the
fact that one just can’t decide between the millions of sites selling the same thing,
just because something is cheaper from one online shop, doesn’t mean that that
should be the best shop to buy from, as discussed, the fact that the product appears
cheaper could be a fraud. ‘corporations will need to accept that in the Social
Networking arena, most of what is said about the company will not be said ‘by the
company’ and as such, these communications need to be managed differently than
in the past.’ (at&t, 2008, p.4)
Social networks have become a very useful tool, containing within them more useful
tools. These have developed over the past few years and are continuing to do so as
the needs of the social networking users become apparent. With regards to the need

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to be able to control privacy as people are finding increasingly difficult to control the
content of what is seen by others on the social networking sites, particularly with
Facebook where people can upload photos of you, tag you and write whatever they
want on your ‘wall’. Tools such as the ability to block someone, to select from the
user privacy settings whether you let everyone see your profile in the same way, or
whether you just let your friends see your profile and the wider networks can be
limited to just viewing carefully selected information.
As described whilst discussing the power of forming groups to gain social support.
Social networking sites are the very tool to do this. The increased range of methods
available for you to choose how to contact your friends has augmented. As found
through the research study has positively changed the accessibility of the means to
communicate with friends.
One of the benefits of the new style of communication is that when you contact
someone on a social networking site as Zuckerberg to Smith (2009) put it ‘you don’t
need to know someone’s email address – you can just send it to their identity
directly.’

6.0 - Conclusion

As communication is changing since the rise in popularity of social networking, there

have been some interesting resounding affects. As examined, privacy and control of
privacy are very important issues for an online business. Whilst many generations
have enjoyed a distinction between their private and professional lives, this is
something that is dying out and we are all adapting and changing, this is for many
reasons. As so many of us use social networking sites, we upload photos and tag
each other from our reckless nights out drinking we can be seen by the world in
ways other than that which we might wish our employers or clients to view us.
Perhaps we might post a careless comment to our status update that we haven’t put
enough thought into that might be able to view it and how they might be judging you.
All these things with a little extra care could be turned around to our benefit and
become things that can show us in a more positive light. Either we start to behave a
little less recklessly on a night out or we take better care in learning about the privacy
tools on social networking websites such as Facebook and exert a little more control
with the tools available such as limiting how others view our profiles, preventing
friends from being able to tag you. Otherwise, another possibility is that we start to
learn to judge people a little less harshly. Already as discussed by Qualman (2009)
we will start to feel more at ease with it such as Generation Y who have grown up
with the use of computers and are at home using digital media. To this generation,
perhaps the distinction between private and professional just doesn’t mean the same
as it does to previous generations.
It appears that Social Networking has changed the way of communication in a way
that people feel more connected to each other. People find that if they need
something in particular they will use Social Networking sites for helping to each other
to be part of a group of people. That also could involve the need as a human being
to be identified as a part of a group and this could be very beneficial for an online

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growing business. There is small step from having links to strangers who you may
have happened across online to a social networking friend who might eventually to
become a client. Being a part of a group gives us more power as consumers, the
theory that we are all linked by 6 degrees of separation (at&t, 2008). This helps us
understand that if one person discovers a fraudulent company and reports it to their
friends and then each of their friends pass on the message and so on, creating a
viral-like warning, could prevent such frauds happening, or continuing. If also we
began to rely more heavily on recommendations by friends rather than possible
fraudulent posts on online shops, this could also change the way that online
companies will have to go about their business, perhaps even there will be a
stronger focus on customer care.
The tools that are available on social networking sites should be more utilised by
online businesses as they provide a great way of getting into the online communities
they can create groups that offer fun or useful software just for the members of that
particular group to enjoy alone. Professionals and entrepreneurs can use social
networking sites to share useful information and advice with other professionals by
doing this they create good Karma for themselves and their company and then after
that their name will be spread in a positive light by word-of–mouth. The tools
available for communication can be very valuable when there is a need for fluid
conversation. This is better than a phone call since there still can be more care taken
into what is written as there is more tolerance of a delay in reply as each person
can’t see or hear the other it is quite possible that a delay in response could be
because someone has walked into the other person’s room and is speaking to them,
stopping that person from replying immediately when in actual fact their response is
being carefully created but made to look like it was spontaneous. Emails can also
now be considered as cumbersome since now when you send a message to
someone’s inbox in Facebook, you are sending it directly to them – you may even be
able to see whether they are online or not, you will see their profile picture, you are
sending it directly to them in a more personal format. Wall updates are also useful,
as when you have a slightly more abstract thought about something or you might just
want to let people know that you are not feeling well, but not want go into great detail
at that stage as the initial wall post often seeks to test the waters to see if anyone is
interested in how you feel or what you are thinking. If anyone is interested, then they
will make themselves known and then you can give the greater details to someone
who actually cares. This also works well when promoting yourself, you can feed your
group with little excerpts about what you would really like to tell people and if they
are interested then even if they don’t write back to you, they might be interested and
reading your updates, which is why these updates can be valuable to maintain to let
people know you, what you are about and what you do.
Based on the survey results it is evident that the inclusion of a search facility on
Facebook might be a valuable tool for users and online businesses alike, this would
help users search for recommendations of products and services from histories of
archived conversations from people in your network. An online business could
equally use this tool for the same reason, they might then be able to see what is
being recommended and why. This could be implemented in the creation of a new
artefact that would be used in as informal a manner as Facebook, but also contains
the searching feature.

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8.0 - Acknowledgments

- Gilbert, Elaine, Senior Lecturer - University of the Arts London.

Rob Peck, Marketing Manager for Custom Applications, Online Brand Building,
SEO, and IT Services.

- Christian Georgeou, Marketing Manager at Incisive Media

9.0- Appendix

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Fig.1
Fig.2

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