How Safe Is Social Networking? Glossary of Social Networking Terms

Magazine publisher Waylon Lewis says his company used a MySpace page to promote parties and other events for its yoga-culture magazine, Elephant, until the page began attracting so much porn spam that he had to abandon the effort. But Lewis's story has a happy ending: His company fled from MySpace to Facebook, and he finds it a great place to publicize events and build community around the magazine. Lewis says his Facebook inbox is completely spam-free, but he wonders whether that, too, might pass if Facebook's ownership or policies change: "I didn't used to get triple-X spam on MySpace."

Add:n. The act of gaining a new friend, and social networking's common currency, as in "Dude, thanks for the add."

Block:v. To configure your social networking service to prevent a particular user from contacting you or viewing your profile.

Check-in:n. In mobile social networking, an electronic message that alerts your group of friends that you have arrived at the local pub and are ready to party.

Cyberbully:v. To attack, harass, or ridicule a fellow community member via posted text, video, or other electronic means.

Defriend:v. The inverse of adding a friend, and the very epitome of coldness. Same as unfriend.

Faceslam:v. To ignore a Facebook friend request from someone you don't know and/or wish would just go away.

Facestalk:v. To scan, jealously, the Facebook profiles and photos of people you know, are going out with, or are going out with in your dreams.

Friend:v. To request that another user add you as a friend--sometimes an awkward moment for the social networker.

MySpace Suicide:n. The act of deleting one's MySpace account forever.

Nudge:v. On Twitter, to send a message notifying someone you follow that they're not posting frequently enough.

Poke: n. On Facebook, a feature that lets other users know that you're looking at their profile, and possibly stalking them.

RL: n. Real life--the world of flesh, bone, and face-to-face meetings that existed before the Web browser.

Slurping: n. The ability of most social networks to import your Web-based mail contacts to see if any are already on the service. Watch out for slurpers that spam every contact with membership invites.

Twitterrhea:n. A condition resulting in an excess of Twitter posts. For even more Twitter jargon, see the Twitter Fan Wiki's glossary.