Monkeynotions

Yesterday danah boyd came to speak at AOL. It’s becoming stranger and stranger the longer I’m in Silicon Valley…these meeting of *celebrities*, as I follow peoples’ work and blog. I have to admit, I am becoming a *groupie*. Since everyone has to do their own PR in the blogosphere, she reflected her style in her blogs and talks, which was great! She had so much to say about social networks and community online and did a great overview of her work thus far on social networks and these are things that struck me:

1) Make sure your community grows organically.
2) Listen to the culture of your site and grow with it.
3) The idea that kids are growing up in these super publics
4) Presence and passion of a person that is continuously dedicated and the face of that site.

Things that it’s got me pondering about:
1) How sub-cultures rub up against each other. Does it make sub-cultures stronger and form them better as you can find so many *similar* online (tailrank theory), do they kill sub-cultures as these sub-cultures rub up against one another in these *super public places*, or do *new* sub-cultures form faster because of the influence and affect of these sub-cultures running into each other in these public places? I have a feeling it’s the first one as it’s seemingly easy to ignore unwanted folk particularly in places like MySpace.

2) If the online world is just a representation of the real person, is it easier or harder to do impression management. The real world is so *analog* and the online world is so *digital*. What are ways we can easily help people do impression management? Do profiles seem too elementary or exactly fitting? I’ll probably have to read up on one of Danah’s papers

In terms of socio-economic classes, points of interest:
1) Working class kids own the better phones and will leave their phone *on* in class. This was because these kids were more than likely to have a part time job over their wealthier counter-parts who were probably in SAT-prep class.

2) Private Institutions like Harvard and Stanford are more diverse than Public Schools. Public Schools will favor in-state people creating a homogeneous pool, whereas private school systems will create a more diverse set because of the flat tuition rate, their ability to seek out polarities of the socio-economic classes. Furthermore, private schools increase loyalty by creating social structures on campus to get the students to inter-mingle (e.g. the facebook, dorms)…some could argue it’s the way of the students becoming institutionalized and socialized to the *Harvard* Way or the *Stanford* Way.

danah always says profound statements that make me think and her eloquent style can really encapsulate many of the sentiments I feel. I do think what is striking most about her is the way she is passioned with fighting for the disenfranchised (like the youth) … thanks for sharing your time!

XML feed of the podcast can be found here. You can also search for “AOL Mountain View” in iTunes Podcast Directory.

Technorati Tags: socialnetworks, danahboyd, aol

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, aol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.