Research and social media trickster Danah Boyd's done everyone the service of posting links to some of her recent research--

• "None of this is Real: Networked Participation in Friendster" by danah boyd - currently in review (email Danah for a copy), ethnographic analysis of Friendster, Fakesters, and digital social play
• Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster by danah boyd and Jeffrey Heer - 2006 HICSS paper on how Friendster Profiles become sites of conversation
• Vizster: Visualizing Online Social Networks by Jeffrey Heer and danah boyd - a 2005 InfoVis paper about visualizing Friendster data (including arguments about using visualization in ethnography and recognizing the value of play in visualization)
• Public Displays of Connection by Judith Donath and danah boyd - a 2004 BT Journal article on how people publicly perform their social relations
• Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks by danah boyd - a 2004 short CHI paper staking out what Friendster is.