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Whether we call them “users,” “participants,” or just “actors,” a focus of information science research and practice is invariably human beings. While user studies have grown in scope and volume since the early ARIST chapters in the 1960s, few researchers have approached study populaces from the perspective of social types. A concept with a long and somewhat sordid history in the social sciences, particularly sociology, as Almog 1998 explains referencing the works of Parker, Simmel, Goffman, Klapp, Becker, and other luminaries, social types in essence refer to: A sociological summary of the typical characteristics of a particular group or of a category of human beings usually recognized and typed by the public and often granted a nickname. This group or category may be a secondary group, a community, a profession, a subculture, a status group, a class or a generation unit that is characterized by its look physical, fashionable or both, life style and philosophy, pattern of interaction particularly linguistic, attitudes and certain psychological traits.

OverviewSocial network websites have played a key factor in the evolution of the “social web.” Hundreds of millions of individuals from all ageranges have flocked to sites such as MySpace http:myspace.com, Facebook http:facebook.com and Orkut http:orkut.com to create an online representation of identity, to manage their social lives, and to establish deep social relationships with other users of the sites. To this extent, the promise of Web 2.0 is embodied in social network websites. Social networks both implicitly and explicitly connect individuals, enabling the representation of a rich social identity embodied in a virtual presence.In this panel, an exciting young group of researchers will present results of their ongoing work in the analysis of social network websites. This panel will present a number of different research methods, as well as international perspectives on the analysis of social networks. danah boyd will present some of the key challenges she has faced in her multiyear, ongoing ethnographic analysis of social network websites. Raquel Recuero will share results of her mixedmethods international work on Fotolog, a popular photobased social network site. Scott Golder and Fred Stutzman will present largenetwork analysis of social behavior in Facebook, the leading collegebased social network. Finally, Alla Zollers will present a quantitative and contentanalysis of activism in social network sites, analyzing the information architecture of the sites and the role it plays in activism.The research and the varying methods presented in this panel will present viewers with an exciting look at the many ways social network websites can be analyzed. These sites stand at the forefront of the social web, presenting myriad opportunities to future researchers.