[Air-l] A verb for using social networking sites

[Julian Hopkins]

It strikes me that maybe the reason why a commonly accepted verb has not
emerged is because there is not a commonly accepted understanding of what
the action (as represented by the verb) actually consists of.

Thus: if I 'Facebook' someone, I am checking him/her out to find out more
about them/how they represent themselves - this is understood as a form of
social vetting. But if I set up a facebook (or MySpace or whatever),
different people do it for different reasons, which probably operate
simultaneously.

Just a thought - not sure if it pans out.

++++++++++
Blog: www.julianhopkins.net
Skype: julhop
IM: jfprhopkins at hotmail.com



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Message: 9
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 09:15:49 +0200
From: <richard.ling at telenor.com>
Subject: Re: [Air-l] A verb for using social networking sites
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
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<04161341FDE60141B7640D4E801D11EC028E292F at TNS-FBU-2E-011.corp.telenor.no>
	
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Hello all,

This is interesting.  The use of these social networking sites has been
around for a couple of years now and actually they have become quite
popular.  However, this has not resulted in a verb describing their use.

It is possible to speculate that since all the different variations are
commercial products that have slightly different characteristics that
this has somehow hindered the development of a collective verb
describing the activity.

If that were then case, for example, IM would have suffered the same
fate.  In the case of IM there were a lot of mutually exclusive
sites/companies offering their services and each had a somewhat
different offering.  Nonetheless, it resulted in the verbs of either
IMing or chatting. Blogging followed suit with IM.  

As several have suggested, the "oh so cool" verb might derived from a
portion of the name, such as facing or spacing, but that would only
refer to one site.  

Another more clumsy alternative might be communitying or social
networking, but neither of these has the verve to be widely used.

I just think it is odd that these sites are quite successful and
widespread, but that there hasn't been the step of developing a verb to
describe their use.

Rich L.