Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites

After reading the article Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life by Danah Boyd,  I was able to understand a deeper look into the world of Myspace. As well as looks upon Friendster, Xanga, and Facebook.

Skyler, 18, said to mom, "If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist." These social network sites develop significant cultural resonance among American teens.

I checked out some of the sites launched to attract teens.
Faceparty- a site to meet other teens with similar interests, chat, and gossip specifically in the U.K.
Bebo (Blog early, Blog often)- Users receive a personal profile page where they can post blogs, photos, music, videos, and questionairres to which other users may answer.
Piczo- a photo website builder and community, users can add items such as images, text content, videos, glitters, shout-outs, and profile pages. Took off in the UK

These are all similar sites in which a community is created and teens are lured in by constant entertainment. They can simply log in and "stalk" other users, pictures, and videos they post. 

We were asked in class to expand on the section Network Publics.
Here, public is best defined as "a collection of people who may not all know each other but share 'a common understanding of the world, a shared identity, a claim to inclusiveness, a consensus regarding the collective interest.'"

Boyd goes deeper into the definition to focus on the 4 properties that fundamentally separate unmediated publics form networked publics:
Persistence: This is the fact that information posted online can be replicated, copied, or reproduced. Enabling communication, but also extending the period of existence of any speech created
Searchability: We may not be able to find one another in a town or state, but by a couple of clicks on a keyboard, a person can be found within seconds. Words or things they may have said can be found just as easily
Replicability: This is similar to Sweeney's article about cloning. Anything in the networks public can be replicated/repeated or copied. It can be made over and over or be used again and again by different individuals
Invisible audiences: This can cover parents, community, administrators, anyone who has access to the internet. It is virtually impossible to know all of those who come across our path online. 

Most of this has been brought up in our education. As students we have been informed of what is okay to post online and what "the public" is capable of finding or seeing us post on social network sites. I don't think this article changed any of my concepts of the networked public. I have had an understanding that what is put online is easily replicated and searched by simply typing a name into Google. One of the things I would look out for as a teacher, would be issues that arrise with children. This is an easy way of students to get a hold of one-anothers information. It is an easy way for bullies to key in on a students pictures/life/history. 
In one of our previous readings, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, an interesting game came up. It was called Medieval Space. In this game students would create a Myspace for a medieval character such as Henry the VI or Queen Elizabeth. As an art teacher I would be extremely interested in having students create a Facebook for artists. They would have to research information on the artist and plug in the information to create a profile for the artist chosen. As a follow up, students would need to friend other artists created and leave messages on the others walls as if they were the artist themselves. 
They can create photo albums of the artists work, profile pictures, "like" pages, etc. Because Facebook and social networking is a popular topic for the youth, this should be a topic they enjoy and are able to relate to.