Social Networking Under Analysis
danah boyd has compiled an excellent bibliography of research on social networking sites. It’s a work in progress, so if you know of things she’s missed, you should e-mail them to her. Regardless, though, the bibliography includes some interesting pieces of work, particularly with regards to privacy on the net, so if you find yourself pondering the meaning of MySpace or trying to unpack your feelings about Facebook, you might give a few of these articles a looksee.
Personally, I’m heavily networked, having pages at Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster, though I must admit, every time I get a message on Friendster, my first thought is, “People still use Friendster?” I’ve also recently ventured into LinkedIn. Personally, I wonder how sharply the community standards at all of these places vary; do people present themselves all that differently on Facebook and MySpace, for example? I find that I put different information on most of these pages, but it has little to do with perceived audience (except in the case of LinkedIn, where I feel it prudent to mind my manners a bit more than normal).