With the American teens that I study, folks do not delete friends from social network sites unless they had a fight or broke up (romantic relations and friendships). In other words, deletion is an explicit, rude, intentional, and mean act that is meant to be a rejection. That said, when they switch networks or create a new account (often because they forgot their password), they don't add everyone back that they had before. So the "churn" is more a matter of new systems, new valuing of people. This is really noticeable in IM where they create new accounts more often (because their handle is lame, because they didn't want someone to see them, because it's a new school year, whatever). I can't remember if i've ever written this up properly (I'm blurring what I've written, said, and blogged about)... In a blog post, i documented some fieldnotes about breakups: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/04/02/ relationship_pe.html danah On Aug 10, 2007, at 5:20 AM, Aleks Krotoski wrote:
Hello, I was wondering if anyone's done any research or has any insight into how often people remove friends from buddy lists. Is there Buddy churn in Instant Messaging or on Social Networking sites? On RSS feeds or on Blogrolls? In virtual worlds or MMOGs?
Absolutely any pointers/directions/references welcomed!
Thanks very much, Aleks PhD candidate, University of Surrey http://www.toastkid.com
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