Learning the Ways of the People of the Web

By Erica Naone - Wednesday, August 25, 2010
MIT Technology Review

2010 TR35 member Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, studies how people use social networks and makes recommendations about how companies can best use social technologies to serve their users. Recently, Boyd has been a vocal advocate for better privacy controls on social networks.

Click on the link to watch the four-minute video in which Erica Naone interviews Danah Boyd, an ethnographer and prominent social researcher who studies trends in social networking. In this interview, Danah Boyd describes her analysis of emerging and evolving trends in Facebook.

Quote: "It's about what the social contract is, what the relationship with the company is, and that's why you keep hearing people talk about trust and control. So what is it that people are doing; what is the new social contract?"

It may have been how the piece was edited, but I got the sense that she is skilled at framing and establishing what are the key "buzz" issues right now. However, I didn't hear anything very innovative or practical from her.

...but she said "Social Contract."

Huhuhuhuhuh, you said "social contract"

She not only said, "social contract," she said it twice in the same paragraph.

Well that's the strongest evidence you have used to support your beliefs in quite some time.

True enough. It's been 8 years since I last published a peer-reviewed paper on the subject.