socialnetworksite

Academia.edu is a social network site that aims to show "academics around the world structured in a 'tree' format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations" and enable "academics to see news on the latest research in their area - the latest people, papers and talks".

There is a genealogy-like setup to show adivsors and advisees.

More interesting, however, is the news feed feature that shows upcoming conferences and new publications.

Could this work? Will it catch on? Time will tell. It could certainly be useful.

Facebook now has 150 million users. "If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria."

So is there anyone left that isn't on Facebook? Farhad Manjoo of Slate says: "There is no longer any good reason to avoid Facebook. The site has crossed a threshold—it is now so widely trafficked that it's fast becoming a routine aide to social interaction, like e-mail and antiperspirant."

Social network sites are of great interest to researchers. Usage statistics are quite difficult to find, as these sites grow so quickly. Additionally, the difficulty in measuring "use" include defining heavy versus light use as well as determining real profiles versus fake profiles and multiple profiles.