Social Networking Sites

The article, "Social Networks: History, Definition, and Scholarship" served to accompany the knowledge I already had about SNSs and fill in a lot of the gaps I always wondered about. I had never even heard about Friendster, and it was interesting to read about its successes and failures. The info about Friendster also illustrated a very important aspect of SNSs, as well. The article discussed that the site experienced some technical difficulties. I believe that the success of sites like Myspace and Facebook are largely due to rock solid technical work and maintenance. Once in a while, Facebook will be down for an hour or so, and I'm sure it angers a LOT of people. If this were to happen more frequently, they could lose a lot of users.

The article discussed the uses of SNSs and stated that users are really supporting existing relationships rather than finding new ones. I agree and disagree. I think most refrain from "creeping" on randoms, but I also think small interactions that never would have lead to friendships (or whatever) have the possibility of turning into deep connections due to SNSs. For instance, I don't talk to too many people in most of my classes, but it is very common to become "friends" with someone on Facebook because they're in the same class as you. A couple of wall posts and ten minutes of chat later, a real friendship is made that exists in the offline world, also.