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is social technology really social?

rhiannon sawyer, a fellow graduate student in sydney, is writing her thesis on friending on myspace. she tells me she has just started conducting interviews with myspace users, and is finding “that everyone has their own definition of friendship on MySpace and that often they don’t actually call it that… Businesses and individuals seem to […]

howto: hide on facebook

there is a little known feature on facebook that allows you to be invisible to everyone but those you’ve added as a friend. this means that no one can find you in searches as well as network browsing (people looking through other people’s friends lists), wall comments, anything. you are entirely invisible to anyone who […]

the political economy of facebook (or, why we hate facebook but keep using it)

i found an amazing article today on the political economy of facebook, myspace and the other usual suspects written by ryan bigge (former adbusters staffer before kalle lasn went apeshit and turned the mag into an antisemitic brand of shoes). basically, bigge argues that use of social networking sites can actually be seen as unpaid […]