Time-wasting.

Because my brain is so fried from Maundy Thursday services at TELCOM, I have been reduced to that most seductive of 20-something diversions, Friendster (and its higher-ed counterpart, Thefacebook). Two shocking things have become apparent as I have traveled the gossamer threads connecting friends, friends-of-friends, friends-of-friends-of-friends, and that most awful relation, "Not Closely Connected." First, I never realized there were so many hot men in rural and quasi-rural counties in Washington State. Second, it astonishes me how much these Friendster-clone networks have to offer in terms of epidemiological thinking and social analysis in general. It seems to me that these networks provide the basis for having real, usable data for all sorts of studies in how human social networks really work. For instance, are their different of node-friends, that is, friends who are the gatekeepers of other groups - based on the access they grant you to other people when they are on your friends list? This principle has been demonstrated in other studies, but I wonder if online networks like Friendster create different (better?) data. (I grant, from the outset, that there are myriad problems with what kind of data these networks can provide, in terms of what kind of spaces they tend to be and to whom they are accessible. But these are just random thoughts.)