social network sites: my definition

Source: Corante

Date: 12/11/2006

Author: Danah boyd

A “social network site” is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile.

The definition is quite good but I disagree about the "Semi-persistent public comments". A comment is an action too much specific for any kind of simple participation. Why semi-persistent ? In case of a vote, the action is always persistent.

I’m half-inclined to qualify the definition to say that the profile and articulated social network are the centralizing feature of these sites because there are tons of sites that have profiles and social network site features as a peripheral components of their service but where the primary focus is elsewhere. Examples of this include: YouTube, Flickr, Last.FM, 43Things, Meetup, Vox, Crushspot, etc.

Totally true ! But what happens when profiles are highly connected in site functionnalities ? When each content is reliable to one or more users ? When the core of the system is social links ? So each content become a node in the social web. The definition of Danah boyd is maybe a bit extremist ?

An apple is not a game. Sure, it can be used in a game but it is not inherently a game. Not all sites that allow people to engage in social activity are social network sites and it is ridiculous to try to shove them all there simply because there’s a lot of marketing money to be made (yet i realize that this is often the reason why people do try).

Web 2.0 and social web must be an ideology, not a marketing attribute.