This link has been bookmarked by 74 people . It was first bookmarked on 18 May 2008, by C. McKell.
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20 Oct 16
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The Delphic oracle’s guidance was know thyself. Today, in the world of online social networks, the oracle’s advice might be show thyself.
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“going to be one giant living dynamic learning experience about consumers.”
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Republican contenders for the White House are poorer social networkers than their Democratic counterparts
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“Given any two people in the world, person X and person Z,” he asked, “how many intermediate acquaintance links are needed before X and Z are connected?”
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he number of social links an individual can actively maintain has increased dramatically, bringing down the degrees of separation.
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T
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weak ties (largely professional ones) were more useful than strong ties for locating far-flung individuals,
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overwhelmingly dull sea of monotonous uniqueness, of conventional individuality, of distinctive sameness.
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This is a quaintly Victorian notion of privacy, embracing the idea that individuals should be able to compartmentalize and parcel out parts of their personalities in different settings
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Friendship on these sites focuses a great deal on collecting, managing, and ranking the people you know
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as individuals use social networking more for entertainment, their level of social involvement decreases
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That she finds these online relationships more reliable is telling: it shows a desire to avoid the vulnerability and uncertainty that true friendship entails
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Real intimacy requires risk — the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool. Social networking websites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfying remains to be seen.
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31 Mar 16
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As for politicians, with the presidential primary season now underway, candidates have embraced a no-website-left-behind policy. Senator Hillary Clinton has official pages on social networking sites MySpace, Flickr, LiveJournal, Facebook, Friendster, and Orkut. As of July 1, 2007, she had a mere 52,472 friends on MySpace (a bit more than Miss Irresistible); her Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama had an impressive 128,859. Former Senator John Edwards has profiles on twenty-three different sites. Republican contenders for the White House are poorer social networkers than their Democratic counterparts; as of this writing, none of the GOP candidates has as many MySpace friends as Hillary, and some of the leading Republican candidates have no social networking presence at all.
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14 Nov 14
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12 Jan 14
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09 Dec 13
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(where to friend is now a verb)
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A user “friends” people — that is, invites them by e-mail to appear on the user’s “Friend Space,” where they are listed, linked, and ranked.
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You list your friends on Facebook as well, but in general, unlike MySpace friends, which are often complete strangers (or spammers) Facebook friends tend to be part of one’s offline social circle.
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Today’s online social networks are congeries of mostly weak ties — no one who lists thousands of “friends” on MySpace thinks of those people in the same way as he does his flesh-and-blood acquaintances, for example.
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But “friendship” in these virtual spaces is thoroughly different from real-world friendship. In its traditional sense, friendship is a relationship which, broadly speaking, involves the sharing of mutual interests, reciprocity, trust, and the revelation of intimate details over time and within specific social (and cultural) contexts. Because friendship depends on mutual revelations that are concealed from the rest of the world, it can only flourish within the boundaries of privacy; the idea of public friendship is an oxymoron.
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Friendship on these sites focuses a great deal on collecting, managing, and ranking the people you know.
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The structure of social networking sites also encourages the bureaucratization of friendship. Each site has its own terminology, but among the words that users employ most often is “managing.” The Pew survey mentioned earlier found that “teens say social networking sites help them manage their friendships.” There is something Orwellian about the management-speak on social networking sites: “Change My Top Friends,” “View All of My Friends” and, for those times when our inner Stalins sense the need for a virtual purge, “Edit Friends.” With a few mouse clicks one can elevate or downgrade (or entirely eliminate) a relationship.
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17 Jul 13
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14 Jul 13
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13 Mar 13
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19 Feb 13
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So perhaps we should praise social networking websites for streamlining friendship the way e-mail streamlined correspondence. In the nineteenth century, Emerson observed that “friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.” Now, technology has given us the freedom to tap into our network of friends when it is convenient for us. “It’s a way of maintaining a friendship without having to make any effort whatsoever,” as a recent graduate of Harvard explained to The New Yorker. And that ease admittedly makes it possible to stay in contact with a wider circle of offline acquaintances than might have been possible in the era before Facebook. Friends you haven’t heard from in years, old buddies from elementary school, people you might have (should have?) fallen out of touch with — it is now easier than ever to reconnect to those people.
But what kind of connections are these? In his excellent book Friendship: An Exposé, Joseph Epstein praises the telephone and e-mail as technologies that have greatly facilitated friendship. He writes, “Proust once said he didn’t much care for the analogy of a book to a friend. He thought a book was better than a friend, because you could shut it — and be shut of it — when you wished, which one can’t always do with a friend.” With e-mail and caller ID, Epstein enthuses, you can. But social networking sites (which Epstein says “speak to the vast loneliness in the world”) have a different effect: they discourage “being shut of” people. On the contrary, they encourage users to check in frequently, “poke” friends, and post comments on others’ pages. They favor interaction of greater quantity but less quality.
This constant connectivity concerns Len Harmon. “There is a sense of, ‘if I’m not online or constantly texting or posting, then I’m missing something,’” he said of his students. “This is where I find the generational impact the greatest — not the use of the technology, but the overuse of the technology.” It is unclear how the regular use of these sites will affect behavior over the long run — especially the behavior of children and young adults who are growing up with these tools. Almost no research has explored how virtual socializing affects children’s development. What does a child weaned on Club Penguin learn about social interaction? How is an adolescent who spends her evenings managing her MySpace page different from a teenager who spends her night gossiping on the telephone to friends? Given that “people want to live their lives online,” as the founder of one social networking site recently told Fast Company magazine, and they are beginning to do so at ever-younger ages, these questions are worth exploring.
The few studies that have emerged do not inspire confidence. Researcher Rob Nyland at Brigham Young University recently surveyed 184 users of social networking sites and found that heavy users “feel less socially involved with the community around them.” He also found that “as individuals use social networking more for entertainment, their level of social involvement decreases.” Another recent study conducted by communications professor Qingwen Dong and colleagues at the University of the Pacific found that “those who engaged in romantic communication over MySpace tend to have low levels of both emotional intelligence and self-esteem.”
The implications of the narcissistic and exhibitionistic tendencies of social networkers also cry out for further consideration. There are opportunity costs when we spend so much time carefully grooming ourselves online. Given how much time we already devote to entertaining ourselves with technology, it is at least worth asking if the time we spend on social networking sites is well spent. In investing so much energy into improving how we present ourselves online, are we missing chances to genuinely improve ourselves?
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22 Oct 12
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and it is the timeless human desire for attention that emerges as the dominant theme of these vast virtual galleries.
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: in language
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, in politics (
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nd on college campuses
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Today’s online social networks are congeries of mostly weak ties
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. It is surely no coincidence, then, that the activities social networking sites promote are precisely the ones weak ties foster, like rumor-mongering, gossip, finding people, and tracking the ever-shifting movements of popular culture and fad. I
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18 Oct 12
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11 Sep 12
Isabelle Vodjdani"Joseph Epstein praises the telephone and e-mail as technologies that have greatly facilitated friendship. He writes, “Proust once said he didn’t much care for the analogy of a book to a friend. He thought a book was better than a friend, because you could shut it—and be shut of it—when you wished, which one can’t always do with a friend.” With e-mail and caller ID, Epstein enthuses, you can. But social networking sites (which Epstein says “speak to the vast loneliness in the world”) have a different effect: they discourage “being shut of” people. On the contrary, they encourage users to check in frequently, “poke” friends, and post comments on others’ pages. They favor interaction of greater quantity but less quality."
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02 May 12
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A marker of wealth and a bid for immortality, portraits offer intriguing hints about the daily life of their subjects—professions, ambitions, attitudes, and, most importantly, social standing.
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painted anthropology,
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Self-portraits can be especially instructive. By showing the artist both as he sees his true self and as he wishes to be seen,
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Although social networking sites are in their infancy, we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where to friend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on college campuses (where not using Facebook can be a social handicap). But we are only beginning to come to grips with the consequences of our use of these sites: for friendship, and for our notions of privacy, authenticity, community, and identity. As with any new technological advance, we must consider what type of behavior online social networking encourages
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ndermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong?
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know thyself.
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“an entirely new way for consumers to express their individuality online.” (It is noteworthy that Microsoft refers to social networkers as “consumers” rather than merely “users” or, say, “people.”)
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Social networking sites are also fertile ground for those who make it their lives’ work to get your attention—
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weaker relationships, such as those we form with colleagues at work or minor acquaintances, were more useful in spreading certain kinds of information than networks of close friends and family.
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weak ties (largely professional ones) were more useful than strong ties for locating far-flung individuals
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Today’s online social networks are congeries of mostly weak ties—no one who lists thousands of “friends” on MySpace thinks of those people in the same way as he does his flesh-and-blood acquaintances, for example.
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It is surely no coincidence, then, that the activities social networking sites promote are precisely the ones weak ties foster, like rumor-mongering, gossip, finding people, and tracking the ever-shifting movements of popular culture and fad. If this is our small world, it is one that gives its greatest attention to small things.
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Nevertheless, our need to believe in the possibility of a small world and in the power of connection is strong, as evidenced by the popularity and proliferation of contemporary online social networks.
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more than half of all Americans between the ages of twelve and seventeen use some online social networking site.
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vast teenage playgrounds—or wastelands, depending on one’s perspective.
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the incredible embarrassment she caused her teenage daughter when she joined Facebook: “everyone in the whole world thinks its super creepy when adults have facebooks,” her daughter instant-messaged her.
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the proto-social networking sites of a decade ago used metaphors of place to organize their members: people were linked through virtual cities, communities, and homepages.
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By contrast, today’s social networking sites organize themselves around metaphors of the person, with individual profiles that list hobbies and interests.
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10 Mar 12
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19 Feb 12
Caro Maillouxor centuries, the rich and the powerful documented their existence and their status through painted portraits.
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or centuries, the rich and the powerful documented their existence and their status through painted portraits.
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Self-portraits can be especially instructive. By showing the artist both as he sees his true self and as he wishes to be seen, self-portraits can at once expose and obscure, clarify and distort.
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Today, our self-portraits are democratic and digital; they are crafted from pixels rather than paints. On social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook, our modern self-portraits feature background music, carefully manipulated photographs, stream-of-consciousness musings, and lists of our hobbies and friends.
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A new generation of social networking websites appeared in 2002 with the launch of Friendster, whose founder,
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Friendster was an immediate success, with millions of registered users by mid-2003.
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MySpace, launched in 2003, quickly to surpass it.
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Besides MySpace and Friendster, the best-known social networking site is Facebook, launched in 2004.
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Niche social networking sites are also flourishing:
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Other niche social networking sites connect like-minded self-improvers;
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43things.com
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Social networking sites are also fertile ground for those who make it their lives’ work to get your attention—namely, spammers, marketers, and politicians.
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. On MySpace and Facebook, for example, the process of setting up one’s online identity is relatively simple:
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By contrast, Facebook limits what its users can do to their profiles. Besides general personal information, Facebook users have a “Wall” where people can leave them brief notes, as well as a Messages feature that functions like an in-house Facebook e-mail account. You list your friends on Facebook as well, but in general, unlike MySpace friends, which are often complete strangers (or spammers) Facebook friends tend to be part of one’s offline social circle.
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Social networking websites “connect” users with a network—literally, a computer network. But the verb to network has long been used to describe an act of intentional social connecting, especially for professionals seeking career-boosting contacts. When the word first came into circulation in the 1970s, computer networks were rare and mysterious. Back then, “network” usually referred to television. But social scientists were already using the notion of networks and nodes to map out human relations and calculate just how closely we are connected.
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There is a Spanish proverb that warns, “Life without a friend is death without a witness.” In the world of online social networking, the warning might be simpler: “Life without hundreds of online ‘friends’ is virtual death.” On these sites, friendship is the stated raison d’être. “A place for friends,” is the slogan of MySpace. Facebook is a “social utility that connects people with friends.” Orkut describes itself as “an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends.” Friendster’s name speaks for itself.
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But “friendship” in these virtual spaces is thoroughly different from real-world friendship.
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06 Dec 11
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Vital statistics, glimpses of bare flesh, lists of favorite bands and favorite poems all clamor for our attention—and it is the timeless human desire for attention that emerges as the dominant theme of these vast virtual galleries.
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“an entirely new way for consumers to express their individuality online.” (It is noteworthy that Microsoft refers to social networkers as “consumers” rather than merely “users” or, say, “people.”)
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it relies on e-mail to determine whether “any two people in the world can be connected via ‘six degrees of separation.’
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25 Oct 11
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we should be asking isn’t how closely are we connected, but rather what kinds of communities and friendships are we creating
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24 Oct 11
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The number of social links an individual can actively maintain has increased dramatically, bringing down the degrees of separation.
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people you might have (should have?) fallen out of touch with—it is now easier than ever to reconnect to those people
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23 Oct 11
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Today, our self-portraits are democratic and digital
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On social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook, our modern self-portraits
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carefully manipulated
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interactive
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ephemeral
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Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong?
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There are sites specifically for younger children, such as Club Penguin
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one giant living dynamic learning experience about consumers
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the activities social networking sites promote are precisely the ones weak ties foster, like rumor-mongering, gossip, finding people, and tracking the ever-shifting movements of popular culture and fad. If this is our small world, it is one that gives its greatest attention to small things.
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entrenched barriers of race and social class undermine the idea that we live in a small world. Computer networks have not removed those barriers.
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protean selves
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certain kinds of connections easier, but because they are governed not by geography or community mores but by personal whim, they free users from the responsibilities that tend to come with membership in a community.
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The secret is to tie the acquisition of friends, compliments and status—spoils that humans will work hard for—to activities that enhance the site.
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level of social involvement decreases
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Real intimacy requires risk—the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool. Social networking websites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfying remains to be seen.
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27 Jul 11
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Today, our self-portraits are democratic and digital; they are crafted from pixels rather than paints.
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candidates have embraced a no-website-left-behind policy.
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how many intermediate acquaintance links are needed before X and Z are connected?
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six degrees of separation
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Spanish proverb that warns, “Life without a friend is death without a witness.”
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In the world of online social networking, the warning might be simpler: “Life without hundreds of online ‘friends’ is virtual death.”
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social networking sites
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favor interaction of greater quantity but less quality.
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13 Jun 11
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Wolfgang LenzThe New Atlantis » Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism: http://t.co/9jWLLMV
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19 May 11
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02 May 11
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“The world is shrinking because social links that would have died out a hundred years ago are kept alive and can be easily activated. The number of social links an individual can actively maintain has increased dramatically, bringing down the degrees of separation. Milgram estimated six,” Barabási writes. “We could be much closer these days to three.”
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the activities social networking sites promote are precisely the ones weak ties foster, like rumor-mongering, gossip, finding people, and tracking the ever-shifting movements of popular culture and fad
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A survey conducted in 2006 by researchers at the University of Dayton found that “40 percent of employers say they would consider the Facebook profile of a potential employee as part of their hiring decision, and several reported rescinding offers after checking out Facebook.”
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In its traditional sense, friendship is a relationship which, broadly speaking, involves the sharing of mutual interests, reciprocity, trust, and the revelation of intimate details over time and within specific social (and cultural) contexts.
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it can only flourish within the boundaries of privacy
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They favor interaction of greater quantity but less quality.
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05 Apr 11
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Indeed, media coverage of social networking sites usually describes them as vast teenage playgrounds—or wastelands, depending on one’s perspective. Central to this narrative is a nearly unbridgeable generational divide, with tech-savvy youngsters redefining friendship while their doddering elders look on with bafflement and increasing anxiety. This seems anecdotally correct; I can’t count how many times I have mentioned social networking websites to someone over the age of forty and received the reply, “Oh yes, I’ve heard about that MyFace! All the kids are doing that these days. Very interesting!”
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What characterizes these online communities in which an increasing number of us are spending our time? Social networking sites have a peculiar psychogeography. As researchers at the Pew project have noted, the proto-social networking sites of a decade ago used metaphors of place to organize their members: people were linked through virtual cities, communities, and homepages. In 1997, GeoCities boasted thirty virtual “neighborhoods” in which “homesteaders” or “GeoCitizens” could gather—“Heartland” for family and parenting tips, “SouthBeach” for socializing, “Vienna” for classical music aficionados, “Broadway” for theater buffs, and so on. By contrast, today’s social networking sites organize themselves around metaphors of the person, with individual profiles that list hobbies and interests. As a result, one’s entrée into this world generally isn’t through a virtual neighborhood or community but through the revelation of personal information. And unlike a neighborhood, where one usually has a general knowledge of others who live in the area, social networking sites are gatherings of deracinated individuals, none of whose personal boastings and musings are necessarily trustworthy. Here, the old arbiters of community—geographic location, family, role, or occupation—have little effect on relationships.
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11 Feb 11
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26 Jan 11
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25 Jan 11
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20 Dec 10
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20 Oct 10
Maren Guse-"self-portraits can at once expose and obscure, clarify and distort."
-2002 launch of Friendster, 2003 MySpace
-"social networking sites are “going to be one giant living dynamic learning experience about consumers.””
-NewsCorp bought MySpace
-{poking} t -
13 Oct 10
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to friend
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Bulletin Board Systems
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Circle of Friends
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networking
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small world experiment
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the proto-social networking sites of a decade ago used metaphors of place to organize their members:
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By contrast, today’s social networking sites organize themselves around metaphors of the person, with individual profiles that list hobbies and interests
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What happens when a friend breaks up with someone—do you defriend the ex? If someone “friends” you and you don’t accept the overture, how serious a rejection is it?
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As Danah Boyd, a graduate student studying social networks at the University of California, Berkeley, told the authors of MySpace Unraveled, social networking promotes “informal learning.... It’s where you learn social norms, rules, how to interact with others, narrative, personal and group history, and media literacy.”
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“You might run into someone at a party, and then you Facebook them: what are their interests? Are they crazy-religious, is their favorite quote from the Bible? Everyone takes great pains over presenting themselves. It’s like an embodiment of your personality.”
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Internet’s supposed charms: the promise of anonymity.
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17 Sep 10
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05 Aug 10
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21 Jul 10
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Self-portraits can be especially instructive.
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04 Jun 10
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03 Jun 10
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14 May 10
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18 Apr 10
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21 Dec 09
yossi ben davidמדברים כאן על זה שהחברות הוירטואלית כיום זה סוג חדדש של נרקסיזם
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09 Sep 09
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22 Aug 09
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31 Jul 09
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25 Jul 09
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09 Mar 09
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26 Feb 09
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30 Jan 09
Adam Crowe'Self-portraits can be especially instructive. By showing the artist both as he sees his true self and as he wishes to be seen, self-portraits can at once expose and obscure, clarify and distort. They offer opportunities for both self-expression and self-
socialnetworking behaviours psychology cyberpsychology identity self narcissism solipsism
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11 Dec 08
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16 Nov 08
Zohar Manor-AbelIt's an interesting article about Facebook, and something that I am fascinated about - the effect of technology on the psyche... Especially as I find myself getting more and more hooked to this. This writer also has a piece on Tivo and Playstation, etc., turning kids into monstrous narcissists too. Bring on Gen N.
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15 Sep 08
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This is a quaintly Victorian notion of privacy, embracing the idea that individuals should be able to compartmentalize and parcel out parts of their personalities in different settings. I
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on the Internet, private misbehavior becomes public exhibitionism.
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But “friendship” in these virtual spaces is thoroughly different from real-world friendship. In its traditional sense, friendship is a relationship which, broadly speaking, involves the sharing of mutual interests, reciprocity, trust, and the revelation of intimate details over time and within specific social (and cultural) contexts. Because friendship depends on mutual revelations that are concealed from the rest of the world, it can only flourish within the boundaries of privacy; the idea of public friendship is an oxymoron.
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To be sure, we all rank our friends, albeit in unspoken and intuitive ways. One friend might be a good companion for outings to movies or concerts; another might be someone with whom you socialize in professional settings; another might be the kind of person for whom you would drop everything if he needed help.
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ocial networking websites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfying remains to be seen.
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21 Aug 08
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06 Aug 08
Seb PaquetAlthough social networking sites are in their infancy, we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where to friend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on colleg
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24 Jul 08
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06 Jul 08
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18 May 08
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30 Apr 08
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