Me, looking at how me and my friends are connected. Only 284 people, but 4052 lines

We tend to call the collective of our friends a network. A social network. We tend to go networking – meeting people. What does my social network mean? I investigated a bit.

For some years it seemed debatable whether social networking sites were private or public space. One might have argued „I am among friends and only friends (those I accepted and they have accepted me) so it is a private matter whatever I do.” Now there is at least one case in Romania when the court ruled that one’s social networking profile is public space and all laws are applicable as such.

This issue made me wonder how private or public is my (or anybody’s) profile depending on the privacy settings applied. So I checked it out and tried to find some other interesting stuff too.

Results in short
I have 283 friends (in a technical sense). My friends have friends anywhere from a few dozen to close to the facebook limit (5000). The count of my friends’ friends is 131,338 individual profiles – so much for the privacy provided by the setting called „friends of friends”. If all my friends who are friends of eachother’s shook hands, that meant 4,052 handshakes. The number of people who are potential audience may easily dwarf that of a regional newspaper and is comparable to the reach of nationwide media products in spite of the seemingly limiting privacy settings of a particular post. (tovább…)