although we can all theorize about the web and social networking there really is no substitute for actually doing it, even if it makes you feel uncomfortably like a teacher gatecrashing a student party.
thus it is with my new favourite website, facebook. It would be tedious to list all the differences between facebook and myspace but suffice to say that facebook offers a neater, more organised and clinical world than myspace's shabby glory. First off, you can't contact or look at profiles of people you don't have a connection to (myspace makes a desultory attempt to pretend this is the case but of course it isn't). Second, there are all sorts of clever tools for organizing your friends and contacts into discreet but overlapping networks, just as you often imagine them in your head (my college friends, my work friends, my met-them-down-the-pub friends). Third, it makes the shape of a person's social existence instantly discernible to an observer - your 'social capital' is laid bare, its dense web of connections tidied into easy-to-get bundles.
when you sign up, in common with some other networking sites like linkedin, facebook searches your email address book and tell you which of your friends/contacts is already on the site. Then you can instantly sign them up as your first friends. Inevitably this throws up people you haven't contacted in years. You will find yourself almost irresistibly drawn to contact them via the site, if only to say 'hey look at us, we're on facebook!'.
which leads me to reflect on how these networking sites throw a new light on communication. Sites like this lead me to contact people that I may otherwise never have contacted, not because I couldn't track them down if I really had something to say, but because - well, because I can.
the intuitive way of thinking about communication is this: a person has something to say, then they find the appropriate medium in which to say it. That medium might be the voice, the written word, the telephone or email or smoke signals or something else. The medium carries the message to the receiver, who may reply or may choose not to return your calls, ever. But what the web networking sites show is how the medium can precede the message - I want to use this medium, therefore I'll think of a message to send this person. It's a kind of McLuhanism of everyday life.
