Tales from the Net

We think that highlighting the stories of people and groups who are using social network sites as part of their day-to-day lives for staying in touch with old friends and meeting new ones, learning, personal growth, professional development, and political activism will help people better understand the transformative possibilities of this medium, and give a new lens for exploring the tough issues related to privacy and free speech.

Introducing … Tales from the Net , January 2008

When we started working on Tales from the Net, one of our major goals was to demystify social networks, both to make them less scary to people who don’t have experience with them .  Since then, Facebook’s grown so explosively that today the majority of people in the US have a Facebook account.  People feel safe there, and for many it’s become a big part of the fabric of their lives, a core channel for day-to-day communications with friends and families.  Demystification accomplished.  Thanks, Facebook!

But by itself, Facebook gives a very partial view of the possibilities.  Most of the stories we’re planning to tell in Tales from the Net are set on sites with a different feel and different styles of interacting: lengthy discussions as opposed to brief wall posts and status updates, personas and multiple identities as opposed to a “true name” policy, much more tolerant of political speech and sexuality.

So the book has evolved into something of a travelog, visiting different social network sites and telling the stories we find there. We’ll spend the most time at places we’ve hung out at over the years: tribe.net, Seducersworld, free-association, Twitter, and yes even Facebook. We’ll also make shorter side trips to exotic locales like Lostpedia, IfWeRanTheWorld, 4Chan, the Oil Drum, and Dreamwidth.

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After a lengthy hiatus, we’re delighted to report that we’ve resumed work on Tales from the Net.  It’s a different world on social network sites now than it was back in 2008, so our focus for the book is somewhat different, but the underlying idea is the same.  By highlighting the stories of people and groups who are using social network sites as part of their day-to-day lives — for staying in touch with old friends and meeting new ones, learning, personal growth, professional development, and political activism — we think we can help give a better understanding the transformative possibilities of this medium and exploring the tough issues related to privacy and free speech.

More details soon!

Welcome to the blog for Tales from the Net, a book-in-progress on social networks by Deborah Pierce and Jon Pincus.   We’ll be using this blog along with discussion boards on various sites, a wiki, and other social computing technologies to create, discuss, and edit large chunks of the book, as well as for topics that don’t make it into the final draft.

One of our main goals for the book is to demystify social networks, both to make them less scary to people who don’t have experience with them — and to empower people who are currently using them. A lot of media attention today focuses on the value of the big social networking sites (is Facebook really worth $15 billion?) or the downsides such as their potential for privacy invasion,  or patronizingly dismisses them as just the latest fad for teens and college students with too much time on their hands. We think that highlighting the stories of people and groups who are using social network sites as part of their day-to-day lives for staying in touch with old friends and meeting new ones, learning, personal growth, professional development, and political activism will help people better understand the transformative possibilities of this medium, and give a new lens for exploring the tough issues related to privacy and free speech.

We’ll be using this blog to collect information (reference lists, pointers to good stories to tell), to discuss news stories and some of the key issues, and to get feedback on what we’re writing about. There are lots of good blogs out there already focusing on social networking; we hope we’ll carve out our own niche.

Stay tuned!

Deborah and Jon

PS: All posts and comments on this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons “by” (aka “attribution”) license, allowing unlimited sharing and remixing for commercial and non-commercial purposes under the condition that it is attributed to the individual author and “Tales from the Net”.