The Gazette- Yet another Facebook story

In Saturday's (03/28/09) edition there were two articles that could be of interest to anyone working on social networking sites.
The first was an entertaining editorial by Josh Freed "Your world's a stage on Google street view". It is helpful because he discusses the differences between the generation of our "parents" versus "the transparent" generation. It helped me understand my reluctance a bit more as he continued on to describe how the younger generation has no problem putting all of their business out in the open in comparison to the older generation. Maybe I am just an old soul... The premise of the article is about the expansion of google's services and that Montreal streets can now be seen as well. In any case the editorial is quite funny and definitely worth the read.

The second article can be found in the Weekend Life section's front page. It is by Susan Schwartz and is called "Facebook vultures". It is a great source and as well worth the read. What I appreciated from it is there is a bit about the celebrity nature of these sites. So maybe I wasn't so off...suspecting that these sites create the type of environment that allows us to feel like a celebrity. On second thought maybe I need not reassess my original research question but maybe to just add on the impact of our self centered culture and wanting to be famous...uhm so maybe there is a budding sociologist in me ;)
Here's a link to the article- http://www.montrealgazette.com/Life/Facebook+vultures/1437860/story.html If for whatever reason you cannot get to it go to www.montrealgazette.com and type in the search box: A "friend" indeed.

While on the Gazette site I saw a link to another article on how Twitter helped a man get a mortgage. It was a great article proving the impact of social media. Here's a link to that one too for those that are interested http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/money/story/0,26844,25261841-5015825,00.html.

Well until next time....