Recently Danah Boyd presented results of an ethnographic study of MySpace, where she focuses primarily on its use for identity construction in youth culture. A good overview if you’re not familiar with it. I’ve been playing around with MySpace myself recently, and find myself much more interested in one of its more notable features: how they handle groups. Unlike Friendster or Tribe they encourage groups to host their own blogs as if they were individuals in a network of friends, enabling bands, DJs. etc who wish to promote their events to do so through the network links. For example, check out Suntzu Sound a local DJ group here in Seattle. Look at the comments and how friends of Suntzu Sound can interact with the group, really fostering that sense of community in their fan base. In promotional emails etc. I increasingly see DJs/musicians refer to their MySpace site. It really works, mixing individuals and groups as equivalent in a network. In various projects we did at Microsoft in the Social Computing Group we really struggled with how to visualize groups in the context of a network of individuals: if you are trying to best represent real world social dynamics neither the group model, nor the network of individuals model adequately captures how individuals socialize/organize as collectives. Depending on your entry point into a network - through an individual you know or through a group you know - each provide a lot of contextual information for the other that aids in groking a particular crowd. In MySpace you see both at the same time, and easily hop from group view to individual view. This is very humorous: I was searching for a favorite video recently (greg the bunny) and found this Greg the Bunny in MySpace. I love it, though I wonder how this trend towards commercialism of the site will impact its sociability.
Individuals, Groups, and Networks in MySpace
Posted by shelly on March 10, 2006
