Blogging, Social Media, and Algorithms
Years ago, when we were on web forums with a dozen or more people we knew each other. Over time web forums and chat rooms became bigger, as more people adopted the World Wide Web. In the process we went from being part of several niche web forums to being part of MySpace, Friendster, Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk and plenty of other sites.
As the number of people on these networks grew exponentially, so our social networks grew exponentially. We went from being part of a forum, to having friends, to followers, to more. In that time our friends were our social network, and more talkative individuals were, the more engagement, and intimate our relationships became. Within this context I mean intimacy, in that we knew how we thought, how we felt, how we lived, what we worked on and more.