Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites

By D. boyd. First Monday, 2006

630 citations recorded by the source corpus.

“Are you my friend? Yes or no?” This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites. Participants must select who on the system they deem to be ‘Friends.’ Their choice is publicly displayed for all to see and becomes the backbone for networked participation. By examining what different participants groups do on social network sites, this paper investigates what Friendship means and how Friendship affects the culture of the sites. I will argue that Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally. In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame through which they can properly socialize with other participants. Friending is deeply affected by both social processes and technological affordances. I will argue that the established Friending norms evolved out of a need to resolve the social tensions that emerged due to technological limitations. At the same time, I will argue that Friending supports pre-existing social norms yet because the architecture of social network sites is fundamentally different than the architecture of unmediated social spaces, these sites introduce an environment that is quite unlike that with which we are accustomed.

Subfields: Communication, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/66ea524a3120dbe6b09720cf2e4e4fbf486f9baf

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Communication

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Norm evolution and violation on Facebook (2012, background): “Boyd (2006) notes that Friends (connections formally articulated in the system) on SNSs may differ greatly from friends in a more traditional (i.e. offline) space; the affordances of the technology allow users to easily maintain a much larger friendship network than would be possible through…”
How does online social networking enhance life satisfaction? The relationships among online supportive interaction, affect, perceived social support, sense of community, and life satisfaction (2014, background): “The number of friends, the main source of social support (Boyd, 2006), is one of the widely studied constructs in the online social networking literature (Ellison et al., 2007; Kim & Lee, 2011).”
Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns (2009, methodology): “Friendship is often defined as an exceptionally strong relationship with emotional and practical support (Boyd, 2006).”
Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube (2007, background): “…site participants have different interpretations Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 361–380 ª 2008 International Communication Association 371 of what constitutes a ‘‘friend’’ (boyd, 2006), YouTube participants apply different definitions of what constitutes a ‘‘public’’ video.”
The effect of social network sites on adolescents' social and academic development: Current theories and controversies (2011, background): “…when MySpace introduced its Top 8 function, where users designated their top friends on their profile, it set off a firestorm of social drama among teens. boyd (2006) noted, “There are tremendous politics behind the Top 8, not unlike the drama over best and bestest friends in middle school” (para.”
The virtual geographies of social networks: a comparative analysis of Facebook, LinkedIn and ASmallWorld (2009, background): “In networks that are particularly ego-centered, individuals at the center of their own networks take charge and adapt network norms to fit personal, cultural and social contexts (boyd, 2006).”
A familiar face(book): profile elements as signals in an online social network (2007, background): “Friend links are one way in which individuals traverse through the network, using links to travel from one profile to another [3].”
Groups Formation and Operations in the Web 2.0 Environment and Social Networks (2008, background): “Participants of social network sites bring their respective communities into being through the process of “friending” ( Boyd 2006 ).”
Constructing the Self through the Photo selection - Visual Impression Management on Social Networking Websites (2009, background): “Aside from the global social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook there are also site that are mostly inside one region, i.e. meant to connect people with common language or nationality (e.g. Rate in Estonia, Face in Latvia, Point in Lithuania, Lunastrom in Sweden), common geographical back”
Production, Consumption, Prosumption (2010, background): “● Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking websites, where users create profiles composed of videos, photos, and text, interact with one another, and build communities (boyd, 2006, 2008a, 2008b).”
Informal learning and identity formation in online social networks (2009, background): “Interestingly, the selves they portrayed in their MySpace profiles seemed only slightly embellished rather than deceptive or false as others have suggested (Boyd 2006; Erard 2003).”
Sharing and Web 2.0: The emergence of a keyword (2013, background): “I must share my life because it is distinct from your life (cf. boyd, 2006 on ‘imagined egocentric communities’), and the assumption is that you cannot know about my life unless I share it with you.”
Too Many Facebook “Friends”? Content Sharing and Sociability Versus the Need for Privacy in Social Network Sites (2010, background): “communication are blurring (Boyd, 2006), and the transparent interaction that is available online raises concerns about privacy (Karahasanović, Brandtzæg, Vanattenhoven, et al.”
Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances (2007, background): “The act of ‘‘friending’’ others, and choosing the subset of these friends to display in the so-called ‘‘Top 8,’’ constitute identity performances, because they are willful acts of context creation (boyd, 2006).”