Here is a piece of good writing from Danah Boyd on social networks and how they model, or fail to, relationships between people. How can someone have over 10000 friends? Who are their best friends? Why people create fake identities? The real question is do the social networking sites actually work in the intended context at all.

The most common reasons for Friendship:

• Actual friends
• Acquaintances, family members, colleagues
• It would be socially inappropriate to say no because you know them
• Having lots of Friends makes you look popular
• It’s a way of indicating that you are a fan (of that person, band, product, etc.)
• Your list of Friends reveals who you are
• Their Profile is cool so being Friends makes you look cool
• Collecting Friends lets you see more people (Friendster)
• It’s the only way to see a private Profile (MySpace)
• Being Friends lets you see someone’s bulletins and their Friends-only blog posts (MySpace)
• You want them to see your bulletins, private Profile, private blog (MySpace)
• You can use your Friends list to find someone later
• It’s easier to say yes than no

Dig in for more nuggets here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 13:48 and is filed under On the web. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.