they have moved on...

I saw a title in the catalogue the other day and the subject was social networking on campuses for students. This is an interest of mine and I ordered the book up from our main campus library, even though it was from another country's perspective, I was interested to read the conclusions.

Sat down to have a read and the thing that became obvious from the second paragraph was unfortunately I forgot to check the books publishing date '2009'...big fail on my part.
The paragraph that indicated to me the age of the item and that most of the research was from the early noughties was the mention of 'MySpace' and 'Friendster' and a photo sharing site called 'webshots'.

I had heard of the first two, and the common jokes about 'MySpace' and its tumbleweeds, but I haven't heard of 'webshots'. I now know that it has evolved to a wallpaper and screen saver application for MS word and that 'Friendster' has evolved to a social gaming website.

Just the second paragraph has made it obvious to me that the work would be seriously dated. Interesting from a historical marker point of view and they set out to be "transgenerational ethographers" and to not "confuse meaning across the generational divide". (Martinez Aleman. 2009 Preface.) However not very useful 5 years on, in a world of Apps, Tumblr and Snapchat . The students have moved on. Tech has changed and I, old as I am :-) haven't used the three sites I mention above.

Going off to have another longer look and to see if I can get anything more recent as I head down the path of personal interest to source a theme for study. I will keep this book in mind for historical background research and send it back to shelf.

I should have entitled this post, "what am I thinking..".


@kalgrl
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Martinez Aleman, A, (2009) "Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding what matters in student culture." Routledge.

Cartoon from here