Social Networking Sites

Are you on MySpace? Do you have Facebook? Perhaps your like to share photos on Flickr. I know some people who are on Friendster, but I haven't heard much buzz about it. Also, there's the ubiquitous Classmates page that everyone's seen the ads for. What's your fancy?

Perhaps you haven't heard of any of these (in which case you should try hooking your TV up again because MySpace has been featured in news stories time and again, if only to scare parents of teenagers into screening their kids' internet use). But, I wouldn't worry if you've only heard of MySpace and Classmates, say. Even so, Internet savvy people should have at least a passing familiarity with the name of these webpages: "social networking sites."

I'm currently in the process of writing a few papers on the topic, with the specific purpose of seeing how the use of social networking sites can be helpful/detrimental to (roughly) college age students. At any rate, I'll post on issues about Internet Society from time to time. Check back if you're interested.