Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?
danah boyd is a PhD candidate in the School of Information at University of California, Berkeley and a fellow at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg Center for Communications.
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Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?
Abstract
Social network sites (SNSes) like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo are ubiquitous and today’s youth are spending a great deal of time using these sites to access public life. How is public life shaped by social technology? How are the properties of mediated publics, like social network sites, different from unmediated publics? This article seeks to explore the social dynamics of mediated public life in order to help educators understand their role in socialising today’s youth.
The Challenge
It is difficult to define ‘public’ or ‘private’ without referring to the other. Often, especially in tech circles, these terms are seen as two peas in a binary pod. More flexible definitions allow the two terms to sit at opposite ends of an axis, giving us the ability to judge just how public or how private a particular event or place is. Unfortunately, even this scale is ill equipped to handle the disruption of mediating technology. What it means to be public or private is quickly changing before our eyes and we lack the language, social norms, and structures to handle it.
Today’s teenagers are being socialised into a society complicated by shifts in the public and private. New social technologies have altered the underlying architectures of social interaction and information distribution. They are embracing this change, albeit often with the clumsy candour of an elephant in a china shop. Meanwhile, most adults are panicking. They do not understand the shifts that are taking place and, regardless, they don’t like what they’re seeing.
This leaves educators in a peculiar bind. More conservative educators view social technologies as a product of the devil, bound to do nothing but corrupt and destroy today’s youth. Utterly confused, the vast majority of educators are playing ostrich, burying their heads in the sand and hoping that the moral panics and chaos that surround the social technologies will just disappear. Slowly, a third group of educators is emerging - those who believe that it is essential to understand and embrace the new social technologies so as to guide youth through the murky waters that they present. This path is tricky because it requires educators to let go of pre-existing assumptions about how the world works. Furthermore, as youth are far more adept at navigating the technologies through which these changes are taking place, educators must learn from their students in order to help them work through the challenges that they face.
In this article, I want to address how the architecture that frames social life is changing and what it means for a generation growing up knowing that this shift is here to stay. Educators have a very powerful role to play in helping smooth the cultural transition that is taking place; I just hope that they live up to this challenge.
Social Network Sites
In communities around the world, teenagers are joining social network sites (SNSes) like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. Once logged into these systems, participants are asked to create a profile to represent themselves digitally. Using text, images, video, audio, links, quizzes, and surveys, teens generate a profile that expresses how they see themselves. These profiles are sewn together into a large web through ‘Friends’ lists. Participants can mark other users as ‘Friends’. If that other person agrees with the relationship assertion, a photo of each is displayed on the profile of the other. Through careful selection, participants develop a ‘Friends’ list.
The collection of ‘Friends’ is not simply a list of close ties (or what we would normally call ‘friends’). Instead, this feature allows participants to articulate their imagined audience - or who they see as being a part of their world within the site. While SNSes have millions of users, most participants only care about a handful of them. Who they care about is typically represented by the list of Friends. If an individual imagines her profile to be primarily of concern to a handful of close friends, she is quite likely to have very few ‘Friends’ and, if the technology allows it, she’ll keep her profile private. If she wants to be speaking to her broader peers, her Friends list is likely to have hundreds or thousands of Friends who are roughly the same age, have the same style, listen to the same music, and are otherwise quite similar to her. She is also quite likely to keep her profile publically visible to anyone so that she can find others in her peer group (boyd 2006).
Profiles and Friends lists are two key features on social network sites. The third is a public commenting feature (’Testimonials’, ‘Comments’, ‘The Wall’). This feature allows individuals to comment on their Friends’ profiles. These comments are displayed prominently and visible for anyone who has access to that profile.
These three features - profiles, Friends lists, and comments - comprise the primary structure of all social network sites, although individual sites provide additional features for further engagement. While SNSes allow visitors to wander from Friend to Friend and communicate with anyone who has a visible profile, the primary use pattern is driven by pre-existing friend groups. People join the sites with their friends and use the different messaging tools to hang out, share cultural artifacts and ideas, and communicate with one another.
Mediated Publics
Social network sites are the latest generation of ‘mediated publics’ - environments where people can gather publicly through mediating technology. In some senses, mediated publics are similar to the unmediated publics with which most people are familiar - parks, malls, parking lots, cafes, etc. Teens show up to connect with their friends. Other people are likely to be present and might be brought into the circle of conversation, if they’re interesting, or ignored if not.
Public spaces have many purposes in social life - they allow people to make sense of the social norms that regulate society, they let people learn to express themselves and learn from the reactions of others, and they let people make certain acts or expressions ‘real’ by having witnesses acknowledge them (Arendt 1998). Social network sites are yet another form of public space. Yet, while mediated and unmediated publics play similar roles in people’s lives, the mediated publics have four properties that are quite unique to them.
- Persistence. What you say sticks around. This is great for asynchronous communication, but it also means that what you said at 15 is still accessible when you are 30 and have purportedly outgrown those childish days.
- Searchability. My mother would’ve loved the ability to scream “Find!” into the ether and determine where I was hanging out with my friends. She couldn’t, and I’m thankful. Today’s teens’ parents have found their hangouts with the flick of a few keystrokes.
- Replicability. Digital bits are copyable; this means that you can copy a conversation from one place and paste it into another place. It also means that it’s difficult to determine if the content was doctored.
- Invisible audiences. While it is common to face strangers in public life, our eyes provide a good sense of who can overhear our expressions. In mediated publics, not only are lurkers invisible, but persistence, searchability, and replicability introduce audiences that were never present at the time when the expression was created.
These properties change all of the rules. At a first pass, it’s challenging to interpret context in a mediated space. Physical environments give us critical cues as to what is appropriate and not - through socialisation. We know that the way we can act at the beach is different to how we can act in public lectures. I welcome anyone to show up to a lecture hall wearing a bathing suit, lay down a towel, and proceed to rub oil all over themselves. The lack of context is precisely why the imagined audience of Friends is key. It is impossible to speak to all people across all space and all time. It’s much easier to imagine who you are speaking to and direct your energies towards them, even if your actual audience is quite different.
Just like journalists, participants in social network sites imagine their audience and speak according to the norms they perceive to be generally accepted. The difference is that journalists are trying to carefully craft a message to energise a targeted audience, while teenagers are just shooting the breeze, showing off, and just plain hanging out amongst the people they call friends. The ephemeral speech that would be acceptable in any unmediated public with a homogenous audience is not nearly so well-received in a mediated public with variable audiences.
Of course, two audiences cause participants the greatest headaches: those who hold power over them and those that want to prey on them. The former primarily consists of parents, teachers, bosses, and other authorities. The press have given the impression that the latter is made up of sexual predators, but the most lecherous behaviour tends to come from marketers, scammers, and spammers.
Context is only one complication of this architecture. Another complication has to do with scale. When we speak without amplification, our voice only carries so far. Much to the dismay of fame-seekers, just because the Internet has the potential to reach millions, the reality is that most people are heard by very few. At the same time, embarrassing videos may have only been intended for a small audience, but if others are entertained, these things have a way of being duplicated and spreading through the network at record speeds. Another twist concerns teens who were living regular lives until something propelled them into the mainstream media spotlight (typically death, crime, or other negative situations). Suddenly, their rarely visited profile is the object of curiosity for millions, complicating their lives and the lives of their Friends.
Navigating Public Life Today
The Internet lacks walls. Conversations spread and contexts collapse. Technical solutions are unlikely to provide reprieve from this because every digital wall built has been destroyed by the new technologies. The inherent replicability of bits and the power of search make most walls temporary, at best. This is why most participants in networked publics live by ‘security through obscurity’, where they assume that as long as no one cares about them, no one will come knocking. While this works for most, this puts all oppressed and controlled populations (including teenagers) at risk because it takes one motivated explorer to track down even the most obscured networked public presence.
Teenagers are facing these complications head-on and their approaches vary. Some try to resumé-ify their profiles, putting on a public face intended for those who hold power over them. While this is typically the adult-approved approach, this is unrealistic for most teens who prioritise socialisation over adult acceptance. Some teens work to hide their profiles by providing false names, age, and location. This too is encouraged by adults, typically without any reflection on what it means to suggest lying to solve social woes. Yet, because of the network structure, it’s not that hard for motivated searchers to find an individual through their friends.
Another common approach is to demand adults understand that these sites are ‘*my* space’. In other words, why expect teens to act like they’re in school when they’re not?
This dilemma introduces another complication of how public life has changed. Just because it’s possible to get access to information, is it always OK to do so? The jury is out on this one. Many parents claim that if it’s public, they have the right to see it. Of course, these same parents would not demand that their children record every conversation on the school bus for review later… yet. Because mediated publics are easier to access, they afford less privacy than unmediated publics. So, what does it mean that we’re creating a surveillance society based on those norms?
While I can argue that ‘just because we can, doesn’t mean we should’, it is foolish to assume that society will quietly take up conscientious restraint. College admissions officers and employers will continue to try to get a portrait of the ‘real candidate’. Smitten admirers will continue to try to uncover any and all juice on their crush. And the press will continue to treat any digital data as fair game when publicly destroying someone’s character.
When asked, all youth know that anyone could access their profiles online. Yet, the most common response I receive is “…but why would they?” Of course, the same teens who believe that no one is interested in them are pseudo-stalking the ‘hottie’ that they have their eyes on. Educators are not the only ones playing ostrich for mental sanity.
In response to this surveillance, some youth are starting to play tricks on their invisible audiences. At George Washington University in the United States (US), college students played a prank on the watchful campus police. They advertised a massive beer blast, but when campus police arrived to bust them, all they found was cake and cookies decorated with the word ‘beer’ (Hass 2006). Activist youth are taking advantage of distributed messaging features on mainstream social network sites (bulletins, news feeds) to rally their fellow students to protest, vote (usually campus elections and American Idol), and voice their opinion. An example of this occurred when thousands of American teens used MySpace to organise protests against US immigration policies (Melber 2006).
Youth are also working through the implications of the comments system. For example, teens often break up with their significant other through MySpace comments (typically boys breaking up with girls). The reason for this is simple: a vocalised breakup is visible to all Friends, making it difficult to play the ‘he said/she said’ game or to control the breakup narrative by modifying the Instant Messaging (IM) conversation.
While most of this is taking place through text right now, video is increasing daily. Video is not currently searchable, but technology will advance, making it possible to determine who was in what footage. These systems will also go mobile the moment someone figures out how to break through the mobile carrier roadblock. When things go mobile, location based information will add a new dimension to the hyperpublic infrastructure.
Supporting Youth Engagement
By providing just a taste of how social technologies have altered the architecture of public life, my goal is to whet the reader’s appetite. It is critical for educators to understand how mediated publics are shifting the lives of youth. There are very good reasons why youth use them and encouraging them to return to traditional socialisation structures is simply not feasible (boyd, in press). Rather than diving deeper into these shifts, I want to offer some concrete advice to educators about how to think about new media and how to engage with youth directly.
1. Recognise that youth want to hang out with their friends in youth space.
Although most adults wish that formal education was the number one priority of youth, this is rarely the case. Most youth are far more concerned with connecting with their friends. Their activities are very much driven by their friend group and there is immense informal learning taking place outside of school. Learning social norms, status structures, and how to negotiate relationships of all types is crucial to teens. While most adults take these skills for granted, they are heavily developed during those teen years. In contemporary society, this process primarily takes place amongst peer groups.
Right now, the primary public space that allows teens to gather is online. Not surprisingly, teens are gathering there to hang out with their friends. Much of what they’re doing resembles what you did when you hung out with your friends.
2. The Internet mirrors and magnifies all aspects of social life.
When a teen is engaged in risky behaviour online, that is typically a sign that they’re engaged in risky behaviour offline. Troubled teens reveal their troubles online both explicitly and implicitly. It is not the online world that is making them troubled, but it is a fantastic opportunity for intervention. What would it mean to have digital street outreach where people started reaching out to troubled teens, not to punish them, but to help them? We already do street outreach in cities - why not treat the networked world as one large city? Imagine having college students troll the profiles of teens in their area in order to help troubled kids, just as they wander the physical streets. Too often we blame technology for what it reveals, but destroying or regulating the technology will not solve the underlying problems that are made visible through mediated publics like social network sites.
It’s also important to realise that the technology makes it easier to find those who are seeking attention than those who are not. The vast majority of teens using these sites are engaged in relatively mundane activities, but the ‘at risk’ ones are made visible through mainstream media. In this way, both the technology and the press coverage magnify the most troublesome aspects of everyday life because they are inherently more interesting.
3. Questions abound. There are no truths, only conversations.
Over the last year, dozens of parenting guides have emerged to provide black and white rules about how youth should interact with social network sites. Over and over, I watch as these rules fail to protect youth. Rules motivate submissive youth, but they do little to get youth to think through the major issues. Conversation (not lecturing) is key and it needs to be clear that there are no correct answers; it’s all a matter of choices and pros and cons.
An Educator’s Role
So, what’s an educator to do? More than most, educators are well positioned to directly engage youth about their networked practices. They can posit moral conundrums, show how mediated publics differ from unmediated ones, invite youth to consider the potential consequences of their actions, and otherwise educate through conversation instead of the assertion of power.
I have found that group settings are ideal for engaging youth to consider their relationship with social technologies and mediated publics. Some of the questions that I have asked in the past are:
- Technically, I (your teacher) have access to your profile. Should I, or should I not look at it? (Why or why not?)
- Who do you think looks at your profile? How would you feel if your mother, grandmother, coach, future boss, etc. looked at your profile? Why? What do you think they’d think of you based on your profile alone?
- You were at a party last week and a girl you barely know took pictures of you that you know will get you into trouble, even though you did nothing wrong. She posted them to her profile. How does this make you feel? (When you asked her to take them down, she told you to lighten up. So what’s next?)
- What do you think are the dos and don’ts for having a profile? How do you explore this?
Internet safety is on the tip of most educators’ tongues, but much of what needs to be discussed goes beyond safety. It is about setting norms and considering how different actions will be interpreted. It’s important to approach this conversation with an open mind and without condescension because, often, there are no right or wrong answers.
There are different ways to approach conversing with students. The most obvious is through curriculum, under the broader umbrella of media literacy. At the same time, there are ways to open up this conversation in other settings as well. Social studies teachers can bring in news clippings or case studies. Literature teachers can introduce the meaning of public life through many of the books that teens read. Throughout the world, curriculum regulations differ, but introducing the dilemmas of everyday life is essential.
Finally, there are some practical steps that educators can take to prepare themselves for interacting with all students.
1) Create a profile on whatever sites are popular in your school. Learn the system and make a profile that represents you. Use your own profile and your own experiences to introduce conversations in the classroom – this way they will know that you are online and that you too find it weird figuring out what’s appropriate.
2) Keep your profile public and responsible, but not lame. Add your favourite song; add photos of your cat playing; write about your hobbies. Put blog entries up about these issues and your own experiences in handling them. Write them as personal reflections rather than lectures. Not all students are going to read your manifestos, but you will be setting a standard.
3) Do not go surfing for your students, but if they invite you to be Friends, say yes. This is a sign that they respect you. Write a kind comment back to them if appropriate and make certain to respond to comments that you receive. If something concerns you, privately ask why they chose to put a particular item up on their page, rather than criticise their profiles. Ask about their lives; don’t demand that they behave as you’d wish. Show that you care, not that you dictate.
4) The more present you are, the more opportunity you have to influence the norms. Social network sites are not classrooms and they should not be treated as such. The goal in being present on these sites is not to enforce rules, but to provide responsible models and simply be ‘eyes on the street’ (Jacobs 1961).
Mediated publics are here to stay; yet they are complicating many aspects of daily life. The role of an educator is not to condemn or dismiss youth practices, but to help youth understand how their practices fit into a broader societal context. These are exciting times; embracing societal change and influencing the norms can only help everyone involved.
Useful Links
www.bebo.com
www.facebook.com
www.myspace.com
www.reachout.com.au
References
Arendt, H. 1998, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press (2nd Edition), Chicago.
boyd d. 2006, ‘Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites’, First Monday, vol. 11 no. 12. Retrieved April7 2007 from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/
boyd, d. (in press) ‘Why Youth ♥ Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life’, in Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning: Identity Volume, ed. D. Buckingham (in press), The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Hass, N. 2006, ‘In Your Facebook.com.’ New York Times, January 8. Retrieved 7 April 2007 from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/education/edlife/facebooks.html
Jacobs, J. 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, New York.
Melber, A. 2006. ‘MySpace, MyPolitics,’ The Nation, May 30. Retrieved 7 April 2007 from http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060612&s=melber
Comments
45 Comments so far
An interesting article with many good points and an understanding of todays youth and technology. As a father of seven, a grandfather of eight and an educator I have grappled over recent times with the rate of technology change. I agree with a lot of your comments and it is important for us to come to grips with the teens use of technology and public networks. Many of my generation do worry about teens and profiling on the web. I agree that we did things with friends around the school and shops etc, that our parents did not fully know about, the main problem with technology has been that it is now open to a much larger audience. There are (as with everyhting) benefits and negatives, but as adults it is incumbenton us to set the example and not lecture/or spy. We need to educate our youth about appropriate behaviour and to become the role model. I think we should also encourage teens to educate us on the use of public profiling, so we can help set the example or allow them to set the appropraiet example to us.
[...] y sus post en unos años más. Por mientras hoy, leyendo el artículo de Dannah Boyd llamado “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”, me pregunto qué ocurre en los espacios públicos y privados con la pérdida del contexto que [...]
Great explanation.
Will be wonderful to hear you speak in AU.
Janet
[...] Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? danah boyd offers some advice for educators negotiating the social impacts of Social Networking Systems. (del.icio.us tags: yasns myspace privacy education) [...]
This is a very clear and interesting article, danah. You outline the features and issues associated with social networking sites in a way that really made me think. I like your comparisons with the public spaces frequented by teenagers, as compared with the public mediated or online spaces. Also liked your sugggested ‘conversation’ approach for educators to possibly use with their students - to open up and dialogue about the issues.
[...] Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? [...]
[...] any idea, and when I look for research, Danah has already blogged on it. Her most recent essay, Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?, address an issue that I’ve been thinking about a lot in the last few months, most [...]
[...] any idea, and when I look for research, Danah has already blogged on it. Her most recent essay, Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?, address an issue that I’ve been thinking about a lot in the last few months, most [...]
[...] perhaps more importantl, Edition 13 (the first of 2007) is a belter with great articles from danah boyd, Geetha Narayanan and even a lively chart about the future of PLEs that includes yours [...]
[...] latest issue of Australia’s The Knowledge Tree leads with Social Networks Sites: Public, Private, or What? by danah boyd. It’s just the right length and covers the major issues around teenagers and [...]
[...] of references that back up this point of view when I see them. Via James Farmer, is a great danah boyd article from the Knowledge Tree on social networking and its impact on students today. danah points what [...]
[...] has a paper on the Australian Flexible Learning Framework site; she’s looking at teens & mySpace. [...]
[...] Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? : The Knowledge Tree Gives and Educator Role as well. (tags: socialnetwork education article) [...]
[...] Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? : The Knowledge Tree [...]
[...] around some TechEd sites, I came across this piece by a grad student at UC: Berkley about the relationship between students and teachers as it relates [...]
[...] similar theme, but with more qualitative detail, I recommend a paper of danah’s she recently published online both as text and as audio - “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”. It was [...]
[...] vita pubblica degli individui? Prova a dircelo un bellissimo saggio di Danah Boyd che ho trovato su The Knowledge Tree intitolato “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”, una lettura assolutamente [...]
[...] - what about adding friends as a public view and private messages or comments to a profile, this makes it more a social network [...]
[...] Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? : The Knowledge Tree danah boyd is a PhD candidate in the School of Information at University of California, Berkeley and a fellow at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg Center for Communications. (tags: article blogging culture education learning myspace network online public research social Technology tips ict web2.0) Tags…. « links for 2007-05-14 Recent Posts [...]
[...] danah boyd en el artículo en The Knowledge Tree: Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?, éste se caracteriza [...]
Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? : The Knowledge Tree…
Dana Boyd’s article explores the dynamics of today’s youth and social network sites….
[...] Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? : The Knowledge Tree (tags: socialnetwork privacy) [...]
[...] Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? by danah boyd [The Knowledge Tree] “Social network sites (SNSes) like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo are ubiquitous and today’s youth are spending a great deal of time using these sites to access public life. How is public life shaped by social technology?” What role do educators play? (tags: academic blog article danahboyd elearning facebook privacy socialnetworking web2.0 youth myspace) [view academic citations] [hide academic citations] AMA citation: Leaver T. links for 2007-05-29. Tama Leaver dot Net. 2007. Available at: http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/05/29/links-for-2007-05-29/. Accessed May 28, 2007. APA citation: Leaver, Tama. (2007). links for 2007-05-29. Retrieved May 28, 2007, from Tama Leaver dot Net Web site: http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/05/29/links-for-2007-05-29/ Chicago citation: Leaver, Tama. 2007. links for 2007-05-29. Tama Leaver dot Net. http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/05/29/links-for-2007-05-29/ (accessed May 28, 2007). Harvard citation: Leaver, T 2007, links for 2007-05-29, Tama Leaver dot Net. Retrieved May 28, 2007, from <http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/05/29/links-for-2007-05-29/> MLA citation: Leaver, Tama. “links for 2007-05-29.” 29 May. 2007. Tama Leaver dot Net. Accessed 28 May. 2007. <http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/05/29/links-for-2007-05-29/> [...]
[...] One final thought the topography of the myspace network, does not appear very rhizomatic, instead it is threaded through individual links that just solidify existing structures. For an interesting (although at times divergent) take on these issues, please see Danah Boyd’s paper - Social Network Sites: Public, Private or What. [...]
[...] transcript is available here digital [...]
[...] Social Capital Blog Observations on social capital, human interaction, and community. Looks at research and news stories. « Social Finance - P2P Lending The ecological rhythms of empires » Putting personal thoughts on a postcard and letting the whole world read it forever June 13th, 2007 Danah Boyd (PhD student at U. Cal., Berkley) points out why online social networks violate typical assumptions we have about friendships and friendship networks. See: ” Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?“. [...]
[...] networks are newer and more interesting. Indeed, Danah Boyd includes public comments as one of the three defining features of social networks (along with Profiles and Friends lists). Unlike message boards, public comments [...]
I think that public spaces like those offered by emerging social networks such as http://wwww.youpod.com provide a critical place to acquire benefits of otherwise hidden social connections. Social Networks “let people learn to express themselves and learn from the reactions of others”. This in itself benefits society as a whole and helps provide an outlet for free speech. Get connected at http://www.youpod.com .
[...] by Danah Boyd, who was also visiting friends in Israel. Danah discussed her concepts of the public/private nature of social networking sites and we presented ShiftSpace in that context. The talk spawned two articles in Hebrew, you are [...]
[...] transcript is available here [...]
[...] Published May 31st, 2007 participtory culture , networking , web2.0 I found this article about social networking by way of Weblogg-ed last month. It was just what he said it would be: an excellent [...]
I think that public social network sites provide a vital link within society.
New emerging social network http://youbrat.com is simple to use and invites schools to join them.
I think the best way to keep an eye or involve our young, is to join them. Get them involved in school groups. Get involved with the young.
School competitions etc.
Gone are the days when you stood on a soap box to voice your opinion. Now we have the internet. Like all mediums it has its pros and cons. Like all mediums controversy will always follow. So what do we do?
We join and communicate with our young. Join some of the forums and find out what is going on. Get connected http://youbrat.com
[...] context, I would strongly recommend danah boyd’s months-old article on the subject, titled Social Network Sites: Public, Private or What? I was particularly struck by this quote early in the article: What it means to be public or private [...]
I loved the article, but facebook is starting to go the way of myspace.. too much crap. Thats why I love http://FriendSite.com is far simpler and easier to use. Perhaps worth adding to your article?
With all respect to my Facebook buddies, but to all those who ‘request’ to be my friend because you like My Profile I say: let’s not get carried away here. I usually don’t make friends because we once had the same boss, share a Hotmail contact or because, spare me, you “poke” me. P - e - lease.
If you want to be my friend, come and meet me in real life. Let’s have a chat. Err, down at the local pub I mean. Yours or mine. Or join me on next weekends’ bushwalk around the Inner West Bay!
What is so social about Facebook, or MySpace, or Bebo or Linkedin anyway? Social. Noun: a party of people assembled to promote sociability and communal activity. Adjective: 1. marked by friendly companionship with others; “a social cup of coffee”;2. living together or enjoying life in communities or organized groups; “human beings are social animals”; “spent a relaxed social evening”. (Source: World Reference. http://www.wordreference.com/definition/social)
The good news is that there’s a bit of a counter reaction happening. In Australia for example, where a relatively new site called Getalife.com.au is connecting people to meet for a realcup of coffee. Or for a game of soccer at Centennial Park, or a games night at Chris’ place. Or a poke at mine
Simply put, Getalife.com.au offers easy to use tools for people to connect based around sporting, cultural or recreational activities. The activity might be a one-off, like finding a couple of buddies for a kayaking trip up Brisbane River. Others get together regularly, like reading groups. If members can’t find what they’re looking for, they can create a group or activity of their own and invite others to join. Members can start activity groups or build up contact lists (activity networks) of people who may be interested to share real life activities. Anything goes, from bushwalking to white water weekends to art appreciation or Friday night drinks after work.
On any given day, Getalife’s calendar now features more than 250 upcoming events across Australia’s capital cities. In Australia at least, it seems that Getalife has struck a chord in the hearts and minds of ordinary city slickers who are not seeking to build virtual friendships by ONLY spending time on a computer. Instead, they are people look for alternative, contemporary and independent ways to connect with people in real life, get involved in a wide range of activities, meet people and find friendships (or even love) on their own terms.”
In the age of pokes, cyber kisses, spam and the tons of sleaze and phony member profiles dumped on us, Getalife offers a refreshing alternative to get you personally invited by real members to real events. Not because you’re on an bulk mail list, or because you fit the profile of some sales campaign, but simply because the organiser of the event enjoys your company.
[...] paper Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? gives context to the interview. She begins by saying that in the US, SNSs are largely ubiquitous [...]
For anyone looking for a safe family friendly social network, here is a site that I discovered recently. This site appears to be have a lot of safety features in place.
This is a news clip about this site:
Our-Social.com Offers a Safe, Family-Friendly Social Network
Nov. 13, 2007 – At a loss for family-friendly online social networking? Searching for a Web-based community that’s easy to join and not just for younger people? Our-Social.com (http://www.our-social.com) offers a user-friendly environment free of profanity and pornographic material so that members can safely make new friends of all ages as well as connect with existing friends and family. As evidence of Our-Social.com’s commitment to extending a hand to everyone seeking a safe online community, membership is free.
“Our-Social is the clean alternative to the prominent social networking sites,” said founder Theresa Adams. The site’s word filter prevents members from being exposed to profanity and lewd or sexual comments - as well as racial slurs and other hate speech. To further ensure that the site remains clear of offensive material and is safe for all ages, Adams has all pictures, video and audio clips go through an approval process – which takes places within 24 hours of submission - before they are posted.
In addition, Our-Social discourages members from ever publicly displaying information such as their e-mail address, real name and geographical location. As another safety precaution, Our-Social does not have a chat area but does provide a members-only forum. The forum is moderated and has several different threads under the main categories of Family, Health, Faith, Pets and Social Stuff. In keeping with the site’s mission of providing a safe, clean environment, the forum does not allow images except for a profile picture. “The profile picture does not have to be an actual photo of a person,” said Adams. “Members can use an alternative image that fits their personality, such as a funny picture, cartoon, an animal picture or so on.”
Members have their own account pages, which serve as personalized control panels, where users can manage all aspects of their account. Management activities include editing profiles, setting privacy levels for the account, creating or editing articles, checking mail, inviting friends to join, sending out friendship requests and creating numerous picture, video and audio albums.
The albums (also called audio sets and video sets) can hold multiple photo, videos or audio files, and the titles of each appear on the creator’s profile page. Other site members can leave comments in the albums, and individual albums can be set to different privacy levels. That means while all members may be able to view a particular album, another album from the same person might only be accessible to members who have been designated as friends.
I found a new social site that i think just got released, and seems like they’re doing things a bit differently..
http://www.pageyourself.com
[...] Boyd: “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?” (available as audio as well on the same [...]
[...] http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/?page_id=28 [...]
I agree that networks are here to stay! We have also embraced new and current trends in technology and have developed an online Social Networking (SN) platform for our members and users to share opinions, information, advice and events with each other. The SN platform has all the features and benefits you would expect from a web 2.0 application and more. I would be grateful if you could visit http://www dot exclusivelondon dot co dot uk and let me know what you think.
[...] pertinent observations. In this case, the someone is Danah Boyd, and her observations appear on The Knowledge Tree, an “e-journal of learning innovation” published in [...]
[...] Boyd, D. 2007, Social network sites: public, private or what?, The knowledge tree, viewed 23/04/08 <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/edition-13/social-network-sites-public-private-or-what/>. [...]
[...] Networks get things done. They make things happen. People networks can help us find jobs, meet new friends and find partners. It is a social network. The problem with social networks in the real world is that most of the connections between people are hidden. Our networks are only as valuable as the people and connections we can see. This problem is solved with social networking sites as they make these connections visible. You accumulate a list of friends with whom you can see their friends and then theirs and so on and thus the connections are made visible. Read: Danah Boyd’s article in the Knowledge Tree journal http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/edition-13/social-network-sites-public-private-or-what/ [...]
[...] bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” Another article on social network sites (by Danah Boyd) provides the following humorous but probably true observation: “Utterly confused, [...]