"Boyd should retract her essay and submit an apology to the media, who, for some inexplicable reason, has treated her essay as some "definitive" academic report." WRONG. The *media* should apologize to *danah* for "treating her essay as some 'definitive' academic report." Danah made VERY clear that it's not, and the media who have presented it as if it IS a full-on academic report should be ashamed of themselves. As should you, for spreading such hateful, negative sentiments to an author just trying to understand some (rather troubling) societal patterns that everyone is usually too f'ing scared to talk about. I don't know anything about you, but you're attempting to publicly humiliate someone who's attempting to understand and combat inequality: you're the insulting one.

Flame. Over.

I will say I think the premise is interesting. Keep in mind that all socio-economic and cultural groups and sub-groups have outlets, where they can congregate, meet others, and interact as a group with shared interests. So over time it will be interesting to see how social-networking sites can impact how individuals reach out and connect with others, perhaps moving outside of the boundaries of there preferred social group.

It is happening already, there are articles discussing the impact such sites have, such as this one from the New York magazine:

http://nymag.com/news/features/27341/

But going from that type of piece, I would be interested in reading a formal ethnographic study that looks at the statistics of users along with the motives for how different user groups use these sites. Again, Boyd's essay is not an 'academic' piece, and looking at what the Guardian Unlimited posted, well I just have to say who's the editor who approved it? Is it any wonder the blogosphere is so disgusted with the MSM.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2111488,00.html

If one reads the entire essay he might want to temper his remarks. But perhaps not. Some readers may still find all sorts of politically ioncorrect things to make them upset.

This farm boy from Wisconsin with working class parents doesn't see the problem with presenting any hypothesis in an essay. There is either eonough material to back up the hypothesis or there is not enough.

As I don't have unlimited time to invest into "social networking" throughout the day, I gravitate towards the service that has the largest user base available -- which happens to be Myspace. Sure, I could spend as much time on Facebook, Friendster, Xanga, Orkut, LinkedIn (the list could continue), but as I value my time, Myspace simply has a much larger user base for networking and finding old friends.

I value my time, and the service which provides the "best" use of that time is that which I will choose to use.

The suppositions contained within this report seem to be baseless conjecture, but apparently a major news outlet felt compelled to pick up on it -- so bravo to its original author.

I think she owes Latinos, queers, outcasts, and other people an apology. She is clearly misinformed. If there is any "divide" going on, it has been caused by her uneducated essay.

No it isn't. Today's style of journalism thrives on speculation, sensationalism, and gossip. Thoroughly researched and well articulated articles are a thing of the past. There is a glut of information out there. It is not a news agency's job to do in-depth research and analysis. They have to grab the audience's attention from the other news agency down the street. Speed and hype are all that is necessary to make a story news today.