Social network data and practices: the case of FriendFeed

Abstract. Due to their large worldwide adoption, Social Network Sites (SNSs) have been widely used in many global events as an important source to spread news and information. While the searchability and per-sistence of this information make it ideal for sociological research, a quan-titative approach is still challenging because of the size and complexity of the data. In this paper we provide a first analysis of Friendfeed, a well-known and feature-rich SNS. 1 Research framework Social Network Sites (SNSs) are undoubtedly one of the most interesting phe-nomena that bring together new technologies and social practices. They are going through an incredibly fast growth all over the world despite the fact many obstacles like the digital divide still exist. Despite this global success it would be hard to define a single global leader of the SNSs. Facebook, which counts more than 300 million single users mostly clustered in Europe and in the US, is surely a big player but QQ, with a high concentration of users in China, has an eve