Social Networks and New Use of the Internet: an Explorative Research

Since the first Internet era, a lot is changed: the web itself is changed thanks to many technological improvements, but mostly web usage seems to have changed. After Fliker, You Tube, and Second Life, the nowadays well know era of the Web 2.0 has been recently reshaped by the spread of social networks. Thanks to their exponentially growing number of subscribers, Frindster, MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter, and specially Facebook conquered the first pages of most newspapers all over the world. However, since most data on social networks users concerns Nord American subscribers, the aim of the present contribution is to analyse how the spreading of social networks has contributed to change the Italian web surfers’ behaviour. Indeed, after a brief review of the most recent literature about social networks, and a brief overview of the social network evolution, the paper outlines the most relevant results of an explorative quantitative research on the use of social networks in Italy, focusing on Facebook (DiarioAperto, 2009). Although 1251 questionnaires are not completely representative of the true composition of Italian users of social networks, the results of the research provides some suggestions as to the social networks’ different uses in case of private, professional, or simple entertainment-oriented goal. The effected statistical analysis highlights seven different clusters among social networks users. Despite some similarities, each cluster has specific characteristics allowing them to be named. The chosen names are: the politicians, the friends seekers, the worker, the always on, the fearful, the event seekers and the organizers