"This paper explores key issues people experience managing personal boundaries within and across social technologies. We look in particular at email and online social networks. We offer a theoretical framework for understanding the errors in assumptions about the singularity of identity that are currently inscribed into the sharing models of social technology systems. Through a questionnaire study we examine how people facet their identities and their lives, and how these facets are expressed through use of technology. We found for more mature users family was an extremely important context for sharing online, and that email was still a preferred form of communication for private sharing across facets of life. Single, working men had the highest level of incompatible facets, and a higher level of facet incompatibility was correlated with increased worry about sharing in the context of social networks."
"All too frequently, someone makes a comment about how a large number of Facebook Friends must mean a high degree of social capital. Or how we can determine who is closest to who by measuring their email messages. Or that the Dunbar number can explain the average number of Facebook friends. These are just three examples of how people mistakenly assume that 1) any social network that can be boiled down to a graph can be compared and 2) any theory of social networks is transitive to any graph representing connections between people. Such mistaken views result in broad misinterpretations of social networks and social network sites."
The following interview with Henry Jenkins (co-director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT) and danah boyd (PhD student at the School of Information, University of California-Berkeley) was conducted via email by Sarah Wright of the MIT News O
"Your LinkedIn profile is your connection to over 35 million professionals in the business world. Use it to show the world who you are. To help the world find you. "