A history of social networking

By Steve Outing on Nov 26, 2007 in Social networking

A couple colleagues each passed along word of a great report about social networking, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication: “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” OK, so the title doesn’t make you want to drop everything to read it. But you should!

If you’re in the news business, you owe it to yourself to understand the social networking service (SNS) phenomenon. Consider this required professional reading.

5 Comment(s)

  1. On Dec 18, 2007, Chris said:

    I think the e-mail address came from information you supplied when you made a previous purchase from Apple or registered a product. They aren\'t able to arbitrarily divine people\'s e-mail addresses from their credit card numbers.

  2. On Dec 18, 2007, Mark Potts said:

    Steve:
    I assume you and your family already have some sort of relationship with Apple based on that credit card–probably through the iTunes store. If your daughter\'s buying music through the store using your credit card, they\'d have her address on file. Otherwise, none of my credit card companies even know my e-mail address. I think Apple\'s ability to e-mail me a receipt from the Apple Store–I did it the other day, in fact–is pretty cool. But I\'m sure it works because I\'ve got a pre-existing Apple account that\'s tied to that credit card.

  3. On Dec 18, 2007, Derek Scruggs said:

    Has your daughter ever bought there before? I\'m pretty sure this data is impossible to get from Visa/MC. More likely, Apple tapped into a corporate CRM system that had seen both that credit card and email address before.

  4. On Dec 18, 2007, Ben said:

    Has your credit card been used at the Apple store before? They could have saved your email address then and still have it on file. Although, it was your daughters email address, maybe she used your card to purchase a 17\'\' MacBook Pro? :)

    I\'d be interested in knowing if Apple could go out and find your email address from your credit card number, though I find it unlikely.

  5. On Dec 18, 2007, Christopher Ryan said:

    I work with credit card transactions all the time, and have never heard of this information being available — at least not through the normal channels. It\'s entirely possible that some third-party company buys transaction data from merchants and re-sells it in aggregate form. But that would be an identity thief\'s dream-come-true, so I suspect that very few merchants — and certainly not the credit card companies — would participate in such a thing.

Post a Comment