I seem to remember that facebook is based on some kind of network theory, or at least it was when it was founded. But I can't remember the name of the theory. I seem to recall something like "social graph" "social mapping" ....? Does anyone know the precise term? Please help, I am stuck.
There are theories such as the social network analysis or the graph theory that are commonly used in the field of social networks. Maybe you refer to the term "social network theory" and John Arundel Barnes is one of the prominent authors of this theory.
Thanks Cecilia, do you know if zuckerberg studied Barnes, or if he had some kind of direct influence on the making of facebook? There are two possibilities, to study the ideas seperate from real events and to study the actual influence between people. I was interested in the origin of facebook, you see, and I wondered if Zuckerberg or the twins applied theory, or whether they just arrived at the layout of the site intuitively?
I do not exactly the social theories he applied to build the site but maybe his inspiration comes from the real experience at school time as is posted in the link enclosed to this message. Initially Facebook started as a kind of discussion forum but over time it has adopted different approaches that come from the social network theory.
http://readwrite.com/2009/05/10/mark_zuckerberg_inspiration_for_facebook_before_harvard
That was an excellent article Cecilia. It answered my question, i think. Facebook evolved gradually from a grad book of some sorts. Zuckerberg did not read Barnes, and then sit down to design the site. Thanks
it is also useful to look at Actor Network Theory ( ANT ) if you want to understand associations between human and no--human actors in Facebook networks. see the work of Latour and Law
Facebook calls it the "social graph." If you're interested I've published about Facebook's development and the social graph in the attached two articles:
Article The Like Economy: Social Buttons and the Data-Intensive Web
Article The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready
The way I understood Zuckerberg's biography (you know the movie) is, that there was not at all a theory at the beginning. When he first coded his website, he did not at all had an idea how to turn it into money, but was simply fascinated by the idea of a digital projection of real life social networks.
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