online social networks

This week, I'm going to look at the more personal reflection aspects of these final weeks, mostly because the majority of my free time is going to finishing the project, and I'd like to do a discussion of social software in libraries and best practices justice.

I wanted to say a little more about online social networks that I didn't elaborate on in my last post. One thing that I thought was interesting is danah boyd's comment that MySpace was started by 20 something's who are into indie music because I had heard that it was actually initially populated by the queer (mostly gay men I believe) and Burning Man communities. Has anyone else read/heard this? I was also unaware of the strong teenage presence on MySpace.

Well I'm back from my holiday, and am ready to rock social software. I was pleased to see the topic for my first week back was social networks. This is an area where I have particularly strong feelings. In this case my feeling are overwhelmingly negative believe it or not. I think there is a marked difference between this kind of software and other social softwares we have seen in the course. Primarily my issue extends from the fact that social networking sites are privately owned for profit enterprises in general, and more specifically they seem to violate privacy issues with gusto.

While I was not unaware of the downsides of online social networks such as bullying and online predators, I had not realized how much controversy these tools have been causing and was surprised at how this week's readings focused so heavily on these negatives. I still find a little bit strange the idea of relating extensive private and personal information online for the entire world to see.

For this week I actually had some actual experience and knowledge with this technology. My main experience has been with Facebook but have known about MySpace and other networks.

I believe the topic for this week is the one I am most familiar with. I joined my first online social network in early high school because ‘all the kids were doing it’ so I can identify with some of the readings concerning teenagers and online identity. Representation of identity online is important in online networking. Since my foray into it in high school, social networking has become extremely popular not only among teenagers, but among other age groups as well.