The Social Network

The Friends List In “Sociality Through Social Network Sites,” Nicole B. Ellison and Danah M. Boyd give insight to the developments of social network sites and offer an analytical framework for exploring these mediums.  The “Friends” list is one of the three defining features of a social network site (SNS) according to Ellison and Boyd. The other two being the profile and the functional ability to roam those connections. The friends list serves a purpose on social media sites. It describes who can access what content, displays relationships, and allows viewers to browse profiles and find mutual friends.  As social media has changed, so have these features. The assertion of the friends list has become more essential for two reasons: the rise of media streams and third-party technologies using the “social graph” as a way to organize content and the algorithm. The social graph is defined as the global network of linkages between all individuals within a system.  Social media...