It's Complicated

acknowledgments

As exciting as it is to produce a monograph, the very notion of a book being the product of a single person is laughable. So many people helped me create this work, and I am forever grateful for their tremendous advice, support, and editorial efforts.

Long ago, in a land far away, this book began as a dissertation. In 2003, I started collecting data about social network sites, which led me to asking questions about youth practices. This project evolved over time and I have been blessed to be a part of numerous collaborative efforts that helped guide me along the way. When the MacArthur Foundation helped initiate what would become the Digital Media & Learning community, I was lucky enough to be a part of the first massive ethnographic digital youth project. I am indebted to the MacArthur Foundation for funding much of this project and am especially thankful to John Seely Brown and Connie Yowell for their ongoing commitment to my research. It was a blessing to embark on this project surrounded by a community of like-minded scholars working on similar studies. The twenty-eight-person Digital Youth team assembled by Mimi Ito, Peter Lyman, and Michael Carter provided the ideal intellectual space for working out the puzzles in my dissertation. I am especially grateful for long conversations and debates with Becky Herr-Stephenson, Heather Horst, CJ Pascoe, and Dan Perkel.

This project began at the University of California, Berkeley, and I'm grateful for all of the wonderful support I received there. In particular, my dissertation committee — Mimi Ito, Cori Hayden, Jenna Burrell, and Anno Saxenian — helped me realize my ideas into a thesis respectable enough to earn a lollipop. I couldn't have made it through without them, especially after my beloved adviser — Peter Lyman — lost his battle with brain cancer. I am grateful for the entire School of Information faculty who supported me along the way, especially Marc Davis and Nancy Van House.

After finishing my PhD, I embarked on a new set of fieldwork with the best collaborator imaginable: Alice Marwick. Together, we toured the south talking with teens and embedding ourselves in youth culture. This collaboration enhanced my thinking more than I can say. Two chapters in particular — privacy and bullying —would not have been possible without her brilliant insights. Alice helped me rethink many of my assumptions and challenged me to push myself theoretically.

As I started processing the data, numerous research assistants helped me track down literature and keep things organized, including Sam Jackson, Ann Murray, Alex Leavitt, Heather Casteel, and Benjamin Gleason. Others patiently helped me organize my thoughts. My colleagues at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society helped me stay on track by providing a book club structure. In particular, I wish to thank Judith Donath, Eszter Hargittai, Colin Maclay, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and Ethan Zuckerman for hours of shared misery and joy.

Doree Shafrir helped me rip out the dissertation language and restructure the material into a book. When I got lost and confused in my own writing, Quinn Norton stepped in to serve as my literary trainer and editorial dominatrix, helping me whip my disorganized thoughts into prose that someone might want to read. And Kate Miltner helped me ground my arguments and fill in gaps in logic.

When I turned to friends and colleagues for feedback, I was overwhelmed by their willingness to read and critique what I wrote. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the amazing feedback offered at different stages from Mark Ackerman, Ronen Barzel, Geof Bowker, Eliz- abeth Churchill, Beth Coleman, Jessie Daniels, Cathy Davidson, Judith Donath, Nicole Ellison, Megan Finn, Jen Jack Gieseking, Elizabeth Goodman, Germaine Halegoua, Eszter Hargittai, Bernie Hogan, Mimi Ito, Henry Jenkins, Airi Lampinen, Amanda Lenhart, Jessa Lingel, Nalini Kotamraju, Eden Litt, Mary Madden, Alice Marwick, John Palfrey, CJ Pascoe, Jillian Powers, Hannah Rohde, Adrienne Russell, Jason Schultz, Clay Shirky, Christo Sims, TL Taylor, David Weinberger, Sarita Yardi, Michele Ybarra, and Ethan Zuckerman. Their insights and challenges helped make this book stronger.

Throughout this journey, my editors at Yale University Press — Alison Mackeen and Joe Calamia — provided ongoing guidance to help make this a coherent manuscript. The Yale University Press team helped me go from scribbled Word documents to a proper book. And my agents at ICM (first Kate Lee and then Kristine Dahl) and Leigh Bureau (notably, Wes Neff) helped me develop my voice and imagine how this book could reach an audience.

Outside the process of producing the book itself, I have been lucky enough to have a series of mentors who have helped me intellectually and strategically. In particular, I'm grateful to Andy van Dam, Judith Donath, Henry Jenkins, Genevieve Bell, Mimi Ito, Peter Lyman, John Palfrey, and Jennifer Chayes for their ongoing advice and support. I'm especially thankful for Mimi Ito, who helped guide me through this project at every turn, and to my beloved adviser Peter, who took a bet on me. Outside of academia, I have been fortunate to have many mentors, bosses, and advocates in industry who have opened doors and helped me understand the technical side of social media. I'm especially grateful to Tom Anderson, Adam Bosworth, Lili Cheng, Cory Doctorow, Caterina Fake, Reid Hoffman, Bradley Horowitz, Joi Ito, Craig Newmark, Tim O'Reilly, Ray Ozzie, Marc Pincus, Ian Rogers, Linda Stone, Jeff Weiner, and Evan Williams.

After finishing graduate school, I have been fortunate to find an intellectual home at Microsoft Research (MSR). At MSR, I have been surrounded by phenomenal scholars who have pushed me to think deeply. In particular, I want to thank Alice Marwick, Mike Ananny, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Megan Finn, Nancy Baym, Kate Crawford, and Mary Gray — as well as a stream of amazing interns and visitors — for their ongoing collaboration and advice. I am also grateful for the loose collection of folks who have come in and out of MSR to collaborate with me and the rest of the Social Media Collective. And I am deeply thankful for the mathematicians and computer scientists who welcomed me with open arms. Jennifer Chayes, Christian Borgs, and Rick Rashid, in particular, have been more supportive than I ever thought imaginable. MSR provided me with an intellectual home to do research and showed me how powerful constructing a healthy intellectual community can be for enabling innovation and critical thought.

Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to participate in numerous professional networks that have enriched me and supported me in different ways. Conferences, workshops, book clubs, and salons have enabled me to think deeply with diverse scholars. And I'm deeply, deeply, deeply grateful to the countless unnamed friends, scholars, peers, and colleagues who have supported and challenged me over the years. I can't imagine having done this project without their love, support, and laughter.

This project wouldn't have been possible without the hundreds of teens who took the time to talk to me and provide feedback. I'm also thankful to their parents for letting me talk with them and to the teachers, librarians, religious leaders, afterschool project coordinators, and community members who introduced me to them. Although I cannot name all of these wonderful people without undermining the anonymity of the teens I met, I am deeply grateful for their willingness to help me pursue this research. I am also thankful to the various technology creators and engineers who helped me gain access to data or walked me through practices that they were seeing on their services. This perspective, though not always visible in the manuscript, helped me better map teens' practices.

No project of this scale and duration is possible without the support of family. I am eternally grateful for my mother, Kathryn, who has been willing to stand behind me even as I stayed in school long after she imagined necessary; my brother, Ryan, who always managed to roll his eyes at his big sister's insanity in a way that brought a smile to my face; and my cousins Trevor and Julie for making sure I was OK even when I was out causing trouble. I am also deeply indebted to my grandparents Dick and Rita, who have been an inspiration for as long as I can remember.

Last and most important, I have been lucky enough to have the best partner by my side during this process. Midway through my dissertation fieldwork, I met my soulmate. Gilad has bounced around the world with me, keeping me calm and asking me strange questions about my peculiar country. He has supported me through thick and thin and been there for me in ways that I can't even express. As I finish this book, our child is growing inside of me. Together, we are both looking forward to watching Ziv embrace a whole host of new-fangled technologies in years to come.