"The Social Hyperlink" by Lada Adamic (Week 9)

For the 9^th week of LIS 301, I read the chapter written by Ms. Lada Adamic named “the social hyperlink” in Joseph Turow’s book The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age. Adamic began her chapter by explaining what a hyperlink is. She gave a brief description of how hyperlinks have been around since before the age of the social network, even though that is how we generally think about them. Hyperlinks, before the current use, were utilized in social sites for colleges like Stanford and MIT, and even prior to that, they were used on blogs. Adamic delves into how hyperlinks constructed arguments, ideas, and entire blogs during the presidential election, political debates, international discourse, monetary gain, and the like.

Adamic began by looking towards the universe of college interaction online, specifically in top tier schools like Stanford and MIT. What Adamic noticed was how when people were able to rate their friends based on their trustworthiness, niceness, funniness, coolness, or sexiness, it didn’t seem as if anyone could fall into all of those categories. This was something that Adamic decided to hold until later, because it was a more niche topic and was personalized. Then she moved to looking towards how liberals and conservatives utilized hyperlinks and blog posts before, during, and after the 2004 presidential election. She noted that many blogs linked only to their respective supporters, and they only did so to make specific points or to support information or opinions they had. These hyperlinks were usually obsolete in no time at all, and the point Adamic was trying to make was how fleeting the use of some hyperlinks were. Very seldom did conservatives and liberals put citations up of one another, except in the case that they agreed on a particular topic, in which case they cited one another due to surprise on their agreeing. Moving on from the jumble of political citations, Adamic began to touch on communities within the blogosphere and how they use comments and hyperlinks to meet people and interact. The use of these online social communities and their extremities help people be able to meet face to face. Although these networks are generally used to harbor social commentary, they can also be used for buying, selling, discounts, and so on. Hyperlinks allow the delay of purchase and people can obtain a multitude of discounts online if they recommend some via hyperlink. While hyperlinks can be more permanent fixtures, they can also be feeble or have the information in the linked page change even if the link itself doesn’t change. Hyperlinks are incredibly versatile, according to Adamic.

Overall, Adamic wrote a good chapter on the versatility of hyperlinks. However, I felt like there was too little opinion and personal voice shown throughout the chapter, and way too much fact. It felt like the chapter was terribly factual and didn’t look much towards how the individual feels about how hyperlinks have advanced their blogging career. Although this is a tiny criticism, it is important. Overall, though, Adamic wrote a well enough rounded segment.