I think that danah and Boyd's defintion of SNS makes a find distinction but one that is so true and necessary. Facebook, for instance, I believe started out with the goal of networking in mind. Though, today, even with all the distant acquaintances that I call "friends" on Facebook, I do not expect them to have any "networking" relationship to me in the future (i.e. for a job). And I have some sort of pre-existing relationship with all of them outside of the internet world (even if that means we have only met once).
Sites such as LinkedIn and even dating sites were however made with this idea in mind - that forging new relationships will benefit the users in some way. I am neither a member of LinkedIn nor any dating sites, so I do not know what these sites are doing differently, or if they even are intentionally doing anything differently from Facebook, MySpace, etcetera.
I did actually meet someone in an online setting in high school. Keep in mind doing so is completely out of the ordinary for me, but the guy turned out to be completely not creepy - he is a first-year pharmacy student at UT's pharmacy school. I guess you could say we had three degrees of separation, but we had never actually met, until we decided to go to Sonic one night. After that, he ended up dating my friend for two years.
Now I am curious - what kinds of things do sites do to intentionally (or not, I suppose) act as social network sites versus social networking sites? Are there any differences other than the ways in which users perceive the site and what they are hoping to get out of participation with the site? Are the sites themselves doing anything to create or alter these perceptions?
I don't use those sites, either, but I'm happy to join you in your speculation! :) I wonder if the difference lies mostly with the users. You mention that people add "friends" on Facebook even if they've only met them once (or, at times, if they've never met them at all)-- maybe the culture on these other sites is different? I know Jenna has mentioned a few times that on foursquare people don't add anyone they don't know, so maybe it's the same kind of selective adding happening in other places. Like on a dating site, you wouldn't initiate contact with someone who you didn't find at least mildly interesting.
ReplyDeleteFacebook also has that running list of "People You May Know" that lists people who you have friends in common with, and Twitter has a running list of "Profiles to follow" based on who I'm already following. So I wonder if these other sites don't have that visible box for people to look at every time they open the site.
Or maybe it's that the culture of FB/Myspace is that it's a race to get the most friends, while these other sites aren't?