This week's readings present some interesting views on social networking which are refreshing. Normally, social networking sites present nothing to think about with regards to modern society and relationships, but these papers are the beginning of a new viewpoint that I, at least, had never considered.
Donath and Boyd's Public Displays of Connection, seems like the less relevant of the two readings, perhaps because of its age, being published in 2004. Some of the social networking sites they talk about, namely Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.net, Ryze and LinkedIn, have since sunk into obscurity. Before reading the paper I'd actually never heard of either Orkut or Ryze and was even a little surprised to find they're still running. This fact, in a way, contradicts one of the paper's final statements that social networking sites follow "a typical fashion diffusion pattern," (Donath & Boyd, 2004).
Erika Pearson's All the World Wide Web's a Stage felt more contemporary and interesting, claiming that social networkers "perform" to an extent in their online profiles. This seems an apt analysis as Facebook, for instance allows users to write about themselves in whatever fashion and to any capacity they choose.
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