Social networking is becoming more ubiquitous. “(S)ocial networks are social structure(s) made of links that are generally individuals or organizations (and) represent relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities.” The term itself was coined in 1954 by J.A. Barnes. (From Webopedia, accessed July 2, 2008)
Online social networking is defined by its reliance on social software, that is, “software that resides on an individual’s computer or on a website, with which users can create personal profiles, form groups and exchange messages.” (From Economics Network of the UK, accessed June 5, 2008)
This month, I was asked to focus on the two social sites, MySpace and Facebook, and finding the members of these social sites. Our esteemed editor also voiced concern about using this information and possible privacy violations in doing so. As I am not a lawyer, I will let those of you who are lawyers decide the efficacy of using the information you find. (Please see related article on Page 11.) I usually consider this information as “publicly available” if a profile is not private.
These two sites are the most used social sites in the United States (Bebo and hi5 are more popular internationally). MySpace claims more than 72 million monthly unique U.S. users and Facebook has 36 million unique monthly U.S. users. (From Techcrunch.com, accessed July 2, 2008)
MySpace offers email, a forum, communities, videos and weblog space. It is the largest social-networking site. MySpace started with a music and teen focus; music and musical groups are still the most accessed content on the site. MySpace is supported by advertising, which targets users based on their expressed interests, as the site maintains much information on its users. The YouTube phenomenon started as a widget on the MySpace site.
Facebook was originally open only to college students. Since Facebook has opened to others, it is growing faster than any other social site. Facebook has many additional features, gadgets and widgets that are very popular but do require the user to give out much private information in order to use them.
To search Facebook, go to www.facebook.com. While you can search the site directly, you will not be able to view the profiles unless you sign into Facebook. Even then, most profiles are private, so the information available to you is limited unless you are a friend of the person. Of course, in today’s world of six degrees of separation, you may easily be able to contact the person.
MySpace is easier to search. Just go to www.myspace.com. Use the Find People search near the top of the page. If you are searching for a person with a common name, you may get hundreds of matches. Use the Filter Results option to restrict the results by gender and by city or state. This usually will find the profile you need.
Some members use pseudonyms when registering with MySpace. This makes them more difficult to find. When I do not get results using a person’s real name, I will start elsewhere to see if I can find the “handle” the person uses and then search using that.
I usually start my social search with a deep web search engine such as Pipl at www.pipl.com. Pipl gives me much more information than just a MySpace or Facebook page as it includes references from news sites, other websites such as Zabasearch and even some of the board and group news sites. When I start here, it gives me many clues as to other places to look.
To search by name and maybe find the “handle,” I will use a search engine such as www.yoname.com, which does a people search across social networks and brings up profiles from MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Friendster and other social websites. Or, I will use Spock at www.spock.com or Wink at http://wink.com/.
If you find that the person has a public MySpace profile, what kind of information do you get? I recently did a search on a jail inmate. I found his MySpace profile, which said he was single and gave me his supposed income level. This was interesting as the income stated was fairly high and I knew that he was not employed. Even more interesting were the comments of his friends.
On a second occasion, I had been looking for information on an individual and found a Friendster page, a LinkedIn page and other information, but had not found a MySpace page. But in looking at other information, I discovered his handle. I went back to MySpace and searched using the handle and found his page. His Friendster and LinkedIn pages had not had much recent action, but he was using his MySpace page on a regular basis.
In another instance, I found someone’s Facebook profile, but because it was set to private I could not view it. The basic information on the person included the university he attended. Once I knew the university, I went to its website and searched its student directory. I found a student page that he had posted that was not private and perused it.
But if the Facebook profile is public or the person is your “friend,” you can find out interesting things such as education, what they are doing at this moment, hobbies, favorite movies and books, and more. For instance, if you are my Facebook friend, you will find that I like to read, talk, podcast, cook, and train people.
Social information contains lots of clues about a person. You decide if you can use the information you find. I can only tell you how to look for it.
The Law Library teaches more about finding this kind of information in our Skip Tracing classes. Check out our monthly offerings, come in to learn more or call us at 206-296-0940.
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