An Interesting Article

I am not usually a fan of anything written in Tufts student publications. They are usually poorly written, and unless focusing exclusively on campus issues, simply repeat information that could be found in real publications. This weeks Observer however has an article worth checking out because of its relevance to our class and that fact that its actually pretty well written.

Micah Hauser and Michael Goetzman's article "All My Friends" about Facebook addresses lots of the issues that we talked about earlier this semester and provides an interesting perspective to add to our discussion. They make an interesting point about Facebook being similar to a small town in the larger anonymous world of the internet. Through the newsfeed people can passively take in information about all of their friends, similar to how people do offline by seeing people and hearing what friends of friends are up to. Hauser and Goetzman beleive that Facebook is a legitimate community that happens to be online. I think that we should view the website we are creating in similar terms. We are creating a legitimate online community of people who are involved in offline community activism of some kind.

Sadly there is no link on the Observer website but you can pick up a copy around campus.

latest material for review

1. The map (which still requires a new color scheme plus the data we have collected this fall.)

2. New screen shots. (Click to view in a separate screen, enlarged).