For some of you the expansive and organic growth of social software and social networking sites has come as a surprise. You may be wondering why people prefer mediated to face-to-face communication. Is it because portraying your digital self is considered to be cool/hip/necessary? Or is it because these social networkers haven’t got anything better to do? Even though you may or may not understand the driving forces behind creating and maintaining social relationships online, you’ll probably do understand what makes people behave this way: sociality. Humans are social subjects who live/work/eat/sleep in dynamic networks of information and association. Their behaviour is influenced by their habitat and when this habitat and other social dynamics change, so do the actions and behaviour of the human.
Inge Ploum 