Studying social networking

The NYT covers a computing symposium, "2016", where social networking (research) is being discussed. I'm not saying this is not relevant, but somehow I prefer Danah Boyd's almost inside-out approach over the way these professors are theorizing about this 'revolution'.

"Social networks, noted Jon Kleinberg, a professor at Cornell, are pre-technological creations that sociologists have been analyzing for decades. A classic example, he noted, was the work of Stanley Milgram of Harvard, who in the 1960’s asked each of several volunteers in the Midwest to get a letter to a stranger in Boston. But the path was not direct: under the rules of the experiment, participants could send a letter only to someone they knew. The median number of intermediaries was six — hence, the term “six degrees of separation."