My notes from today’s luncheon with danah boyd at the Berkman Center:

At the base of social network sites is the desperate desire to be social, to be apart of a group. Social networks are about friends and people you already know.

Danah said she’s trying to figure why people use these tools. Her background is in computer science and then came to MIT and started studying people. When she quit MIT she started paying attention to what was happening on the web, in 2003, she started following Friendster. She followed a ton of different sites as well. In 2004, she formalized research in order to a dissertation to follow what youth were doing (just in time for MySpace).

Ethnography is about writing culture, she says. To practice ethnographic method is living, breathing a culture. What is that culture when you are talking about technology? Her goal was to do a study of American youth. People thought she was insane.

Danah said she’s moved in between the offline and online worlds for her research with a ton of research on demographics. Since 2004, she’s done lots of things to hang out with youth/in youth spaces. And she’s talked to parents, teacher, etc. She reads, observes and documents.

The difficulty in studying youth culture is in the fact that it’s always changing. She’s at Berkman to talk about MySpace – the last 6-9 months the entire culture has shifted. There is an exodus going on from MySpace to FaceBook. Has more to do with class than anything else.

What’s going on with MySpace?

Pew did some great work in this space. 55% of american teenagers admitted that they shared their online profile with their parents. 70 to 80 percent have a profile, but they might not do more than IM. 50% are active, but there’s a lot more going on. She also interviews people who does not use it.

On Networked Publics (Mimi Ito)

Danah said she’s had a hard time locating it because locating public is difficult. There’s two parts:

1. A collection of space or location where things happen in public.

2. A group of people who share interest or value.

The concept of public: critical to engage in public to make things real (Arendt). Networked publics and what it means through mediated technologies? They are imagined by the public to have some kind of property.

Networked publics have existed for almost thirty years (see Usenet). People organizing around interests. Mailing lists – topic orientation. Then the boom happened. People rushed online, sold on story of e-commerce. Web 2.0 is really interested in the way that it changed the rules of organizing sociality.

People are organized not on topics, but by friends (Castells and Wellman). Went to a friends organizing structure. People who are only a part of religious communities on MySpace think MySpace is only about religious communities.

Back to Friendster

Launched in the fall of 2002. Hit early groups: self defined geeks, freaks and queers.Early adoption was impressive, because none of them saw it as a place to date (necessarily). Burning man attendees were seen as a place to connect with their friends.

Friendster hit mainstream press is 2003. 300,000 users. Language emerged, “She’s not my friend, she’s my friendster”. It became a place to gather and find their friends from high school and college. It was designed as if everyone was dating. It went about trying to make people behave by killing off their accounts = this had some ramifications. Not all users wanted to play by the rules.

Fakesters emerged for a purpose. For example, so all Harvard alum could find each other. Identity spaces emerged. When Friendster started killing them off – many of whom were just playing – they killed off useful communities.

MySpace emerges

Meant to be a rip off of Friendster. MySpace first reached out to indie rock musicians. By late 2003, indie rockers were using Friendster for shows, community building, etc.

MySpace said, “How can we help you?” Indie rockers responded, “You can help us?”

MySpace created unique URLs for the purpose of musicians. And Los Angeles promoters realized this would be a great tool. To get VIP passes, you’d have to MySpace page. As a way to promote shows to venues.

First group jumped on as 21 + crowd. College kids followed what was happening and it went below that in age. When something starts to take off at 21 it works its way down. MySpace dropped it down to age 16. It didn’t take long for teenagers who were musically inclined (within high school). They were using Xanga. They liked to be able to see and collect their friends. MySpace provided this space.

MySpace users figured out that they could put in HTML and tons of other code into their pages. MySpace recognized this emergence and didn’t stop it. They thought it might be interesting to see where it went. This emerged into a copy/paste literacy. They were able to copy and paste from around the web and put it into their MySpace page.

Within this culture, all sorts of chaos emerged. Fishing emerged, privacy became relevant, etc.

Social network sites. This is not about “social networking”, people are about places where they can write into being their social network.

3 properties of social network sites

1. Profile – comes from dating forum: age, sex location, etc. – what can we know about you? However, doesn’t mean that people are truthful.

2. Friends – all the people you care about and are interested in.

3. Public comments – ability write public comments. Created as testimonials in Friendster.

When young people started to use the site they used it for social posturing “Yo, what’s up?

Public comments look a lot like a locker room, bedroom, all the things that makes parents run away. It makes an amazing space for self-expression. This is one of the things that are at risk when parents are let in.

They are publics like the mall, like the park. But they are also unlike any publics you grew up with.

4 properties of this kind of public

1. Persistence
2. Searchability
3. Replicability
4. Invisible audiences

Given these properties young people have been able to make sense of it. Context allows us to understand what is the social way to interact? Requiring what it is and what is appropriate is how you interact. People know they are supposed to be quiet on a bus, but at the same time not actually many people follow those rules.

It’s not that the people are the rule, but the norms around the roles are in a space. The Internet provides that info through the labeling of topic. See the organization of Usenet. It didn’t take long for people not to follow the rules. Alt.tasteless brought a twisted version of what the rules of the community were supposed to be.

Figuring out context has in many ways been in existence in mediated technologies for a long time. Stoakley Carmichael gave talks based on what the audience was like? In 1968, he was forced to go on TV and had a choice. His TV voice helped to define in part how he has been know.

This generation is growing up with celebrity style public without knowing who the publics really are. It’s better to public and be seen then private an invisible.

The American high school image in the 50s was to keep kids off the streets and away from the labor organizers. There are a lot of costs to this dynamic. The rise of bullying started in the 50s. The term teenager was created in 1941 by marketers to pick a market to go after.

This meant a rapid shift in generations. The whole culture changed quickly. Today we are living with the damage of that. Young people v. adults.

Teenagers today are kept out of public life. They are locked inside for many reasons. If they don’t have cars, they can’t get out in many parts of the country. Even when there is public transit parents are afraid to let their kids outside. Most communities in the U.S., there are few places left where kids run free outside and come back for dinner.

The other big affect is that families are highly structured. Going from activity to activity with the hopes of getting into schools like Harvard. Young people are turning to network publics as an alternative public. They are innovating and creating in places where they can create friends.

For example, why do people write comments instead of public messages? It’s better to be seen on the street then to appear invisible.

On breakups

Why are people breaking up on social networking sites? Kids don’t break up in person, but in a mediated way. The assumption is that it is in the witness of other people, so people can see for themselves, not “he said, she said”.

The technology requires other things. To rid themselves of those comments, they delete their ex. And it leaves funny gaps in the history of the conversation. You write who your audience is to be – negotiating different levels of audience based on how they see it. Private means “friends only”.

Writing out audience means that you have to deal with a Top 8. The most dramatic part of MySpace. Pure social drama.

Young people don’t want to friend people who hold power over them, parents, teachers, admissions councilors, etc. They also don’t want those who would prey on them – not necessarily predators but the fear is scammers, marketers, etc.

3 memes

1. Ways of building structural walls. Lie, confuse things structurally. Walls keep one level of block.

2. Demand the way that the social way should work. “Mom’s not wanted, get out!” They want to be public, but only with people like them.

3. Play ostrich – if we don’t see them, then they don’t exist. Find a way to make them go away. Adults deal with this more then young people.

The takeaway

Public life is changing. This generation is growing up with a different public than we’ve known. The society is telling them to leave it and the younger generation is saying there’s something of value here. The moment the cell phone comes in, the less of a way that it is important. MySpace, for some teens, was one of the only places. The cell phone is completely locked down.

Email is dead for young people. Their friends are all discussed through online systems. (U.S.) Only country in the world where you have to pay to receive a phone call. It’s considered rude.

Some of this is changing and it will affect some of these websites. There is still a desire to be public.

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The complete audio & video archive of this talk, including Q&A, will be available soon over at MediaBerkman.