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

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Boyd, Danah·2006·First Monday
DOI 10.5210/fm.v11i12.1418
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Abstract

“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.

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  • Close members of one's inner circle sit alongside strangers under the same banner in an endlessly expanding horizontal network, thus compressing social relations and eliminating context.

    “Close members of one's inner circle sit alongside strangers under the same banner in an endlessly expanding horizontal network, thus compressing social relations and eliminating context.”

    From New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture (2008) · cites this paper as Boyd, 2006

  • The concept of a 'friend' on something like MySpace becomes horizontally flattened.

    “For example, Danah Boyd (2006) and Boyd and Heer (2006) discuss the notion of 'friending' and how the concept of a 'friend' on something like MySpace becomes horizontally flattened.”

    From New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture (2008) · cites this paper as Boyd, 2006

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Authors
Boyd, D.
Affiliations
University of California, Berkeley (US)
Corresponding author
Boyd, Danah
ORCID
Boyd, Danah
Venue
First Monday
Publisher
University of Illinois Libraries
Published
2006-12-04
ISSN
  • 1396-0458 (ISSN-L)
  • 1396-0466
DOI
10.5210/fm.v11i12.1418
OpenAlex
W1991656460
Cited by
636
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 34 · 2016: 51 · 2015: 34 · 2014: 53 · 2013: 54 · 2012: 66
FWCI
44.75
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • First Monday (publishedVersion)
  • First Monday (acceptedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Digital Communication and Language
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
Keywords
friendship, social network sites, online communities, social norms, technology affordances, online socialization, user-generated content

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