Social Networking: the good, the bad, and the ugly

I am on Facebook. And on Linkedin. On Orkut. Hyves. Schoolbank... and on a couple of other social networking sites that I don't even remember myself. And of course I have my personal blog, after all you are reading it. I'd like to say that I'm also on Twitter, but I am too old to understand the terminology on that. But I am digressing.

Except for my blog, I'm not really active on these sites. But I do like to follow my 'friends', 'colleagues', 'classmates', 'friends of friends' or even 'complete strangers'. Reading their posts gives me a sense of snooping in their lives, since they don't actually know I'm reading their posts. But I do have permission of course, nothing illegal there. Now, reading the posts of other people I can't help but wonder what the effects are of these networking sites. I'm not thinking about the obvious repercussions of time spent in a virtual world instead of a real world. I'm also not thinking about the new people you can meet, old people you can re-meet, the career advancing opportunities or the upgrade in your 'cool' factor when you reach 1000+ friends.

No, I'm thinking more in lines of the effect specific remarks can have on existing friendships with those you are writing about. We all know that the absence of face-to-face contact in the virtual world makes it easier for people to be direct (open, frank, honest or downright blunt and nasty). What happens when you write something about somebody, which is in turn read by many others, including the very person you wrote about? Does that affect your friendship? Does that affect the friendship you have with other social networkers that read your posts and think about the possibility of a(n) unwanted guest appearance on your wall? How do you react to these posts when you read them? You can't just 'like' it, right? Or do you just ignore the post?

If you expected to find an answer to these questions, I have to disappoint you. I didn't have time yet to find whether it has been researched, which I will be doing as soon as I can stop reading the posts on all the networking sites I'm connected to. And if I don't find an answer in existing research, I'm thinking about conducting my very own research. Will you participate? I will put up a 'like button' for you if you like. Making my very own social networking site as it were.