[Air-L] Social network site nomenclature

[danah boyd]

Here's an uber short definition for how I think about these terms  
(concurring with many of the previous respondents):

- Social network: ties between people, regardless of mediating  
infrastructure [think what sociologists study]

- Online social network: ties between people that exist within or are  
created because of online technologies

- Social networking: the practice of building one's social network,  
regardless of mediating infrastructure [think what business  
professionals are interested in]

- Online social networking: the practicing of building one's social  
network using online technologies

- Social network site: websites that support the articulation,  
display, and utilization of social networks [see "Social Network  
Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship for a proper definition]

- Social networking site: websites that center on the practice of  
social networking, whether for business or pleasure [many communities  
of interest, business networking, and online dating sites fit into  
this category]


In our JCMC special issue, Nicole and I explicitly wanted to pull out  
the category of new sites exemplified by Facebook, MySpace, etc. While  
they are a subset of online communities, they are both structurally  
different than many of them and engender very different practices.  We  
wanted to use nomenclature that captured those differences.  Of  
course, plenty of folks continue to talk about them as social  
networkING sites and academics, journalists, and marketers frequently  
clump online dating sites and community sites into this new glittery  
genre, but we were trying to explicitly avoid this.  There is no doubt  
that a whole lot of sites out there support networking, but that's not  
what we were trying to highlight when we put together the JCMC special  
issue.

What this means is that I would call Facebook a social network site.   
I would call Match.com a social networking site.  And I would call  
LinkedIn both a social network site and a social networking site  
(depending on whether I was talking about the structure or the  
practice).  I would talk about all of them as CMC and social media.  I  
would say that all of them support online social networks (and social  
networks more broadly).

At the end of the day, the big thing to me that makes a social network  
site a social network site is the articulation, display, and  
utilization of one's social network.  This requires a profile, but a  
profile alone does not make a social network site.

As for sites vs. services...  Originally, I was conceiving of sites to  
be those website-only environments and services to be a broader  
category that would include mobile apps, downloadable apps, etc.  But  
these lines are increasingly blurry.  Now that both FB and MS have  
mobile apps and most mobile apps have a website as well, it's hard to  
distinguish the two categories.  So I'm a big agnostic about this.  My  
inclination these days is to call them all sites to highlight the  
digitally mediated component of it (cuz services don't have the same  
digital ring as sites), but I can be totally convinced otherwise.

Anyhow, I hope that helps.  I am totally welcome to critiques on how  
I'm thinking about it but, in my head at least, there's some coherence  
to these different categories.

danah




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"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
http://www.danah.org/
@zephoria