* 65% seek fame/want the world to see their videos
* 59% do it for fun
* 41% want to share experiences with friends
* 29% want others to benefit from their videos
* 12% do it for other reasons
[1] - http://www.aedipenavarra.es/include_asp/fichero.asp?id=35
I personally do it to share cool stuff and engage with people with the same interests as me.
Even now I still am addicted to blogs. And it makes so little sense not to discontinue should visitors come no more. In fact, it's the reason why the blog is in partial apathy.
Over time, I believe it is the social networking : "connecting people". Or in more concrete terms it is... the ability to announce your presence, as well as offering you things that would not be possible or not easy to achieve in reality. The web makes these possible. Like the blogs for life and a place to express your views without a column or a book, the video sharing you can share your videos, imaging sites where you can share your photos, getting to know friends and lie tremendously with much less fear being exposed ( not quite the case as of a decade, in my opinion, as privacy problem arises ).
It has something to do with making something possible and easier, and most importantly to identify yourself.
20 years later, here is how I explain this to myself. It is known for many years now that our brain has special centers responsible of fundamental drives in our behavior. These centers have been detected and localized by changes in people's behavior when altered by an accident or a disease. The drives are related to hunger, libido, aggressivity/love, etc.
Assuming that mankind is the product of an evolution driven by natural selection, the existence of such drive centers makes sense. It ensures perennity of our species from the biological and the physiological perspective. Maybe the social perspective did not get the same attention.
To me, the existence of a drive for social recognition would make sense because it pushes toward social coherence and cohesion and thus also to stability while being flexible enough to preserve the capability of our society to evolve and adapt to context changes.
This social recognition drive is thus equivalent to sexual drive, with all the possible related pathology. Social recognition compulsion can for instance lead to mythomania or eccentric behavior.
So my impression, if you allow me to push the logic to its extrema, social network sites are a variant of porn sites. They just tickle the brain centers driving our behavior.
I would thus say that social networking is directly related to the social recognition drive which is itself a component to get a stable dynamic system. If this is true, animals would show the same fundamental drive, and why not, ETs too.
You notice that other than outright trolls (who seek attention through infamy), few people will continue to use a social site where they repeatedly get negative karma? And the aphorism "Don't feed the trolls" attempts to make them go away by denying them attention?
I contribute to news.yc because I find it more entertaining than TV or video games. I should really pick up Rock Band though, that could get me to quit news.yc for a couple days.
Hacker News is an example of a third place. I hang out here, as I've hung out in many other netspaces. It's creative here, it's intelligent, and it's fairly diverse. People make things and write things and converse, and for many people, certainly me, that's a fundamental need.
The best users of social media have always looked like the ones who are just showing something 'cool' that they have done or understand that involvement in the social platform can bring great benefits back in the form of an active community.
At least that's what my guess is.
Here's a passage you may find interesting:
"For a wide range of reasons - institutional, cultural, and possibly technological - some resources are more readily capable of being mobilized by social relations than by money. If you want to get your nephew a job at a law firm in the United States today, a friendly relationship with the firm's hiring partner is more likely to help than passing on an envelope full of cash. If this theory of social capital is correct, then sometimes you should be willing to trade off financial rewards for social capital. Critically, the two are not fungible or cumulative."
Benkler's argument is rather complex, so I urge people to read the chapter in full (if not the book) before gainsaying it.
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php?title=Se...
This is a derivative of the campfire.
This is of course simplified tremendously, but it gets the basic idea across. When you think about evolution it is amazing what it can explain in terms of human behaviour.
For example, I participate here, digg, and reddit, but never give any personal information.
For me is more like the getting my turn at the podium without fear of anything, as what I say is not going back to the real me. Of course, if someone really wanted to know who I really am, he or she could find out. But it's not worth the effort.
What I really don't get is the people that are so active in these type of sites that it seems that it is all they do. And they are proud of the fact of being so active. I find the comments interesting; however, for me, they are not enough to cover all my social needs.
I guess with time, we'll know the full effect of "socializing" with cute user-names all day long.
"do these users (who submit and filter content) expect others to return the favor?"
That would be the classical economic explanation and it would be wrong (for the typical user).
Exhibitionism as charity? That's a new one.
And of course, I then like to pass that information on, so that it can be further disseminated.