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Social networking is not killing friendship

Kate Harding — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:10:00 PST

William Deresiewicz has written a long, lovely essay on friendship for The Chronicle Review, ranging from "Achilles and Patroclus, David and Jonathan, Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus" all the way through present-day palhood. It's a fascinating read. Unfortunately, its conclusion -- that social networking means the death of genuine friendship -- is pretty specious for a piece that's otherwise so well-considered. "The Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space, needs little elaboration," writes Deresiewicz. "Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction? When they've shrunk to the size of a wall post, do they retain any content? If we have 768 'friends,' in what sense do we have any?" Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up, my figurative friend. If you're going to automatically equate Facebook "friendship" and genuine companionship, then actually, the Facebook phenomenon does need some more elaboration.

Facebook, the mean girls and me

Taffy Brodesser-Akner — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:01:00 PST

I sit at my computer and wait for Barbara, who once poured yogurt on my head in front of the entire field hockey team, to tell me the details of her breakup with her current boyfriend. While I wait, I chat with Alison, who, years ago, stole my pants during gym and cut a hole in the crotch area, and who needs advice on how to sleep-train her baby. Still, while all this is going on, I play online Scrabble with Rachel, who, when I was 12, told everyone I had faked getting my period for attention.

And the (antisocial) word of the year is ...

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:18:00 PST

I've done it lots of times. You've probably done it as well. Maybe you've even done it to me. People rarely own up to it, but it happens all time. That's why it's the New Oxford American Dictionary word of the year: "unfriend."

Facebook friends to the end

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:27:00 PDT

Last year, a casual friend posted that he had a cold as his Facebook status update. Then the cold turned to pneumonia, pneumonia to sepsis and with horrifying suddenness, he was gone. Gone to his friends, gone to his family. But not gone on Facebook, where his still-active account gave the unintentionally cruel appearance of someone who was still here. True, I was grateful that his account hadn't been summarily wiped away, that this little corner of his online presence hadn't been as easily eradicated as his life had. Yet every time his name popped up on my friends list, every time FB suggested I challenge him in a game or compare people, the loss of him stabbed me anew. So I did the unthinkable: I quietly unfriended the dead man.

"In social media, women rule"

Judy Berman — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:08:00 PDT

New data on the way Internet use breaks down by gender seems to confirm some long-held stereotypes. Marisa Taylor at the Wall Street Journal reports that women outnumber men 57 percent to 43 percent on Facebook and Twitter. We also make up nearly two-thirds of MySpace users. Brian Solis, who crunched the numbers, summarizes his findings in no uncertain terms: "The point of interest that's worth review and discussion is that in social media, women rule."

The Facebook divorce

Amanda Fortini — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:08:00 PDT

“We are getting a divorce. It has been in the works for a while now,” Lauren, a 36-year-old mother of two who resides in a small town outside of Austin, wrote on her Facebook page at the beginning of July, about her husband of 13 years. (Lauren is not her real name.) She was commenting on a response -- a single, stunned “Huh?” -- to the change in her relationship status. “Lauren went from being ‘married’ to being ‘single,'” read the dry, cold, unsympathetic recitation of fact. The infamous little broken-heart icon, the fixture you hope that, like some medical alert bracelet, you will never have to wear, fluttered up to hang alongside it. This is how life’s big moments unfold on Facebook: Epic emotions are reduced to emoticons.

Is the Internet melting our brains?

Vincent Rossmeier — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 04:11:00 PDT

By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We're facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes. What we need, so say these proud Luddites, is to turn our backs on technology and embrace not the keyboard, but the pencil.

How Facebook and Twitter warp your brain

Andrew Leonard — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:18:00 PDT

Dr Tracy Alloway of Scotland's University of Stirling has a theory, pithily summarized by Australia's news.com.au: "Facebook makes you sharper but Twitter makes you thicker."

Facebook and the brutal economics of connection

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:59:00 PDT

"Economics," writes Edward Glaeser in the Tuesday New York Times, "should be seen as a discipline that has spent centuries chronicling the enormous gains that come from people connecting with each other."

Why we can't stop looking

Amanda Fortini — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:24:00 PDT

If you, like me, are somewhat private by nature, you are often made uneasy by our exceedingly confessional society, one in which friends upload photos of all things personal — kids, wild weekends, dark adolescent years — tweet their every move, or allow people to track those moves with a handheld device. Last winter, I argued with a close friend about her plan to post an unattractive photo of me on Facebook. I thought it was my prerogative to ask that the photo remain where it was — in her camera. She thought I was being narcissistic and precious, that I should get over myself. (Or, failing that, just “untag” it.) Last fall, I hired a young woman to help me transcribe an interview, the contents of which I’d hoped would remain confidential, and she wrote about it on her blog. Then my mother began a campaign of cyber-stalking, pointing to my Facebook status updates (“Amanda is driving to the desert”) as proof that I had time to come home for a visit. In the age of cyber-expression, privacy has become a near-impossible luxury.

Steven Chu: Facebooking the nation

Andrew Leonard — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:27:00 PDT

So maybe there is something to this social networking stuff after all. I went to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu's Facebook page with the intent of questioning whether such a stunt had any serious value in terms of pushing forward the Obama administration's energy and climate-change agenda. What does it mean that Chu had 2,137 "fans" when I first checked the page?

Join the shame parade

Carina Chocano — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:28:00 PDT

If there remained any doubt as to the magical moneymaking properties of humiliating self-exposure, it evaporated Monday night as almost 10 million viewers tuned in to watch the wheels come off the bus of TV's most lovable octo-family, the Gosselins. The new season of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" attracted twice the viewers of last season's finale, more than any other show on TV on Memorial Day, and it's probably safe to say it wasn't the promise of birthday party fun that drew them. For weeks, star Kate Gosselin had been trolling for sympathy in the pages of People magazine and Us Weekly as soon as it came to light that her husband had not only been unfaithful, but creepily unfaithful. The shame parade paid off, if not in her marriage then in her ancillary career: TLC has booked them for 40 more episodes.

My date rapist is on Facebook as a "person I might know"

Cary Tennis — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:19:00 PDT

Dear Cary,

Couple seeking couple for good time

Ryan Blitstein — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:40:00 PDT

My wingman is outside on the back porch, chatting up a Grecian MILF with fake boobs. I hover near the dessert table, sipping a potent margarita and trying to follow as a married woman describes life as a social worker in an HIV clinic. She has no idea I'm judging her every word and action, each joke and cultural reference. I am assessing her husband as he looks on, too, and obsessing over what their clothing -- his corduroy jacket, her baggy jeans -- might say about them. My wingman returns from the porch without scoring even a phone number, and we bolt for the next party.

To Friend or not to Friend? That is the question

Cary Tennis — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:31:00 PST

Cary:

The random beauty of "25 Random Things"

Robert Lanham — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 03:59:00 PST

I was in the middle of typing up my "25 Random Things About Me" list on Facebook when a funny thing happened. I hit clear and decided to abandon the whole time-wasting endeavor. I'd made it through what I intended to be my sole entry before coming to my senses:

Activision's Viral Campaign for Singularity Starts with a Bang

Jill Weinberger — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:32:40 PST

Read, watch, review and rate Singularity and MIR-12 »

Editor rating:

Website for this show »

Links

A video of a supposed assassination attempt in Russia pops up on YouTube and clocks over 400,000 views and 1,500+ comments in under a week. The info directs viewers to MIR-12, a shadowy organization bent on uncovering a deeply rooted Russian conspiracy they claim began in the 1950s. Turns out Natasha Norvikov, the fallen would-be assassin, was a member of MIR-12, and the site’s blog promises us that her death will not be in vain; the terrifying truth of the conspiracy will be exposed. Soon, a new video appears on the MIR-12 site, replete with stories of mysterious deaths and a secret Russian island with unstable radiation levels and the ability to disappear completely.

Either Russia really is running nefarious energy experiments and flirting dangerously with the space time continuum, and the only people capable of uncovering it are a covert group of operatives who like to Twitter, or…something viral is afoot. And Netizens are picking up the scent.

In fact, as blog dosdotzero uncovered via some pretty nifty detective work, this is all a campaign for Activision’s new first-person shooter game Singularity, steered by ad agency DDB and video-seeding maestros Feed Company. The intrepid forum posters at Unfiction have uncovered even more content, including Flickr and Facebook accounts for Natasha. They also found another site, named Katorga 12 after the creepy island in question (and the in-game, tell-all book of the same name, whose author was killed under suspicious circumstances), which turns out to be the home of the Singularity trailer. Ah, yes, it’s all coming together.

Adding to the depth of content are nice little touches like Natasha’s Facebook friend, Emily, corresponding with curious online sleuths, and alxnder12, the YouTube poster of the assassination video, adding as “Favorites” actual Russian news stories that might catch the eye of an international conspiracy theorist. Yes, critics are already cropping up and taking swipes at the original video’s production values, the shakiness of some of the Russian translations, and the unlikelihood of anything very terrible happening with Einsteinium (the ominously referenced Element 99), no matter how far amok scientists might run with it. And sure, when you’re promoting a shooter, sooner or later you’re going go have to step away from the backstory and show some, you know, shooting. But these are still early days, and so far, this seems to be a pretty well-orchestrated campaign that’s already doing what it’s supposed to do: It’s got people talking.

Stay tuned. And keep an eye out for mad Russian scientists. Just in case.

Super Bowl 43 preview

King Kaufman — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:00:00 PST

Twenty-five random things about the Super Bowl.

You don't have mail

Mike Madden — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:40:00 PST

The first time Barack Obama's campaign used Facebook to try to spin Salon was on the night Sarah Palin and Joe Biden debated in St. Louis.

Why Twitter Shouldn't Sell

Om Malik — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:37:27 PST

Sarah Lacy, as we were taping her Tech Ticker video show earlier today, asked me about San Francisco-based startup Twitter and its rumored fundraising effort, which would value it in excess of $250 million. Should the company, she asked, put itself up for sale? My answer was “it depends” — on whether Twitter sees itself a service or a platform that would help foster a lot of services on top of itself.

Later, Lacy wondered if Twitter should sell (out) to Facebook or Google or someone else. And now Kara Swisher is wondering if someone should take another run at the company. As I told Lacy, Twitter needs to swing for the fences. Ev Williams already has a notch on his belt — he sold Blogger to Google — and doesn’t need to cash out now. In the meantime, venture capitalists are lining up, ready to fund the company. In other words, he should go for gold.

Twitter, like Facebook, is on the leading edge of the real-time web, which is itself comprised of social micro-content. Thanks to the proliferation of personal Internet devices, digital camera phones and other such gizmos, more and more people are expressing themselves online by sharing photos, videos and of course sending out tweets. Nearly 150 million or so folks use Facebook as a repository of their digital lives, using the service to transmit the information to their friends and family (or even random people.)

While Facebook’s system is closed, startups like Twitter and lesser-known FriendFeed have an opportunity to create more eclectic environments that blend the best of the web. Twitter has the opportunity to help foster a more democratic ecosystem in which multiple Twitter feeder services can live off the platform. A good example would be Twitpic, which allows you to share photos with your Twitter friends, and has seen huge growth in its traffic over the past few months. With more add-on offerings, Twitter will help encourage more such live content.

Like a torrential downpour, the ensuing data flood caused by live content is going to require a new kind of search methodology that can also help put context around this information. With this in mind, last July Twitter acquired Summize, a search engine that could sift through Twitter data streams and make sense of them. (Related post: Can Serendipity Make You Rich?)

Of course, since Ev & Co. are the ones running the company, they could opt to take the easy way out.

Watch yours truly on Yahoo’s Tech Ticker talking about Twitter.