Here's another article in the current wave of not particularly insightful but interesting nonetheless articles on social networking: Facebook, MySpace Reveal Hidden Messages.
The thing that bothers me about this kind of journalism is that it's once again stating the obvious, i.e. if you constantly change your Facebook/MySpace status then you're probably doing some attention-seeking. Do we really need a journalist to point this out to us?
People do all sorts of things to get attention: they dress and style themselves, they surround themselves with 'defining' possessions like cell phones and cars, and if you watch truly gifted networkers at a mixer, then they don't hesitate to approach someone new out of the blue with some sort of an "opener." Chatty people chat. Twitterers tweet. Status updaters update their status. So what.
I think it's fairly obvious that we're exposing ourselves emotionally over social networks - this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only thing I'm really worried about is whether more advanced data analysis is going to scour my online emotional trail one day to create some sort of semantic-emotional graph. A potential employer might not need to analyze my biological DNA if they have access to the emotional 'strands' that I've left online as behavioral fingerprints.
