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Danah Boyd Interview
Who is Danah Boyd?
A few weeks back I blogged about a girl who interested me in the following ways: 1.) She has a pr7 blog 2.) Enjoys studying social networks 3.) Works @ Yahoo! Research. I asked her for an interview and she agreed, so here is my interview with danah boyd.
Your studies of social networking has developed your own group of friends and admires. I think I read that you love dancing and going to raves? How do you separate study from play? Have you ever woken up on someone’s sofa and can’t remember what happened the night before? Have you setup the perfect strategy to get through college and have fun at the same time?
I do indeed love dancing - breakbeats, psytrance/goa mostly although you can get me dancing to d&b/jungle too. I have to admit that i cringe at the word “rave” because while i may dress like a “raver,” my mental model of a rave is a massive involving teenagers curled in balls rolling on ecstasy and talking about who loves who more. It’s been at least 8 years since i was at one of those. Partying for me is more about having fun dressing up, hanging out with (adult) friends and dancing.
Dancing has always been a sanity check for me. It’s exercise and socialization wrapped into one. When things are bothering me, i can work out my frustration and aggression through dancing. When i need to chew on something, i can dance through my problems (kinda like taking a shower). When i need to find my breath again, i can get into a meditative state that way. I don’t think i could’ve gotten through my years at MIT without dancing. Now in San Francisco, i often go out just for a few hours to dance or wake up at 4AM and go out dancing.
I know that the image of my lifestyle is all radical and crazy, but really, it’s not like that. Dancing burns off any and all alcohol in a matter of moments and my Captain & Coke consumption is more to ease the pain of my knees than to get obliterated. I’ve never blacked out; i remember my nights very clearly. As for ending up on someone’s couch, well, that’s normal.
I definitely have fun, but i wouldn’t call my life balanced by any stretch of one’s imagination. I go into hiding and there are weeks when i don’t get out of my pajamas. And then there’s a week every year that i take off to the desert and do absolutely no work. I have a pretty clean separation between work and play, although i have gone to parties for ethnographic observation. But mostly, when i’m hanging out with my friends, i’m not doing research. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from telling me about things they’ve seen.
Do a search in Google for “danah” and there you are, we also find posts from your blog, research papers, people blogging about you and more. If I run my mouse cursor over the hyperlinks you are pretty much #1 for everything you write about. I would just love to see your stats, can you give us the top ten “keywords” you are being found for in the search engines?
Well, that’s what you get for a unique name. My mother was obsessed with typographical balance. danah. It balances nicely. That’s why i get the ‘h’ at the end.
Sadly, i don’t really keep statistics very well. I have a little tracker on my site so that i can notice spikes because those are disconcerting - i always want to know why. According to that little thing, popular words are: boyd, danah, apophenia, dana, blog, zephoria, friendster… I know that recently, i’m getting a lot of hits from “post secret” (because those folks comment).
You have two things that marketers have a very difficult time developing 1.) Social interaction 2.) Trust. Marketers also try to manipulate the engines by link building which is unnatural and often gets very weak results. Have you ever wasted your time trying to get people to link to your blog to become popular?
No. And i rarely comment on others’ blogs and kinda think it’s gross that folks will comment to increase their page rank. I’ve been blogging since 1997. I didn’t expect an audience and didn’t have one until 2003. I’m more invested in writing interesting things than getting links. There are certain posts that i want others to know about and i will send people emails to say “check this out.” But those are my friends or people that i think would have good insights on the post. It’s less about popularity and more about creating a conversation around particular things. For example, i definitely told a lot of folks about the post where i compared big search companies to evil nation states of the 20th century. That post humored me and i wanted others to see it.
I do appreciate page rank when it introduces me to interesting people. But there are times when it makes me really nervous. For example, if i’m writing about something that i just learned, it is really screwy to end up at the top of search for that topic. Take “social construction of technology.” We were learning about it in class and i wrote about it. Then we had an assignment and of course folks looked it up. How embarrassing to be the sample reference for my classmates. Nowadays, i think about the titles of my posts. If i don’t want a post to get page rank for something that i know little about, i’ll word the title generically and try not to create links with those keywords.
You work for Yahoo! Research, tell us about your job. What’s it like there?
Yes indeed. It’s very purple and yellow. But seriously, it’s an opportunity to work with really smart researchers and play with really large datasets. As a researcher, you don’t get that opportunity often. It’s a good complement to what i’m doing because i get to think about how design affects users and then test hypotheses.
Have you attended that CIA conference yet? If not, what was it that you think they are looking to learn from you and others?
::laugh:: Nope. It’s funny - i posted about that and based on the comments, i decided i should go. Of course, when i accepted, they told me i was no longer needed. No explanation but i can’t help but wonder if it’s because i blogged about it. ::shrug:: No sweat off my back.
I read your recent post on “gender representation on King Kong” which kind of reminded me of my analytical self which I sometimes have a hard time turning off. I know your hair is short, but are you ever able to let your hair down Danah and not analyze everything? I have not seen King Kong yet but I bet you could look at it from many angles including from a humorous level, are you following me here?
Oh, sure. I have a friend and we can spend hours talking in chicken. I’ll play mahjong or cribbage for hours. I read stupid pop books and watch all sorts of movies without analyzing them at all. It’s more that King Kong was ripe for it. You walk out of the theatre and can’t help but think about the construction of it. Peter Jackson almost begs you to do so. But, let’s see, what else have i seen lately? Well, aside from Wallace & Gromit which seems to play on every airplane i’m on these days. Oh - i saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the hotel. My analysis was simple - omg, Angelina is sooo hott. ::drool:: Does that count?
But actually, it’s also seasonal. We’re in Oscar season. Films made now are meant to be analyzed. Plus, everything is connected to a book this season. Harry Potter, Narnia, Memoirs, Capote. And there’s stuff like Good Night and Good Luck which is very political and meant to be a commentary about now. I didn’t really analyze Harry Potter or Narnia but i certainly compared it to the book. More because i’m a movie geek than because i’m an analyst. I used to rent a hotel room on the night of the Oscar’s because i don’t have a TV at home and i wanted to watch them. But the last time i did that was when Boys Don’t Cry was up. I cried for hours after Hilary won.
Yep, I agree that there is not a single person on the planet male or female who doesn’t think Angelina is hot.
Where did you grow up and what experiences led you to where you are today?
Lancaster, PA mostly. And oh god that’s a complicated question. So i’ll do it in clips. Single mom, worked hard to put food on the table. Younger brother. I was a complete punkass - too smart for my own good. Always in trouble. My mother was called into school weekly for some random thing that i had or had not done. Was always rebelling against everyone, determined to prove people wrong. But i knew the stakes and i got straight A’s so that people would leave me alone. Got online when i was in early high school and that kept me sane - met interesting people, hung out with friends late at night.
Realized that if i just got out, everything would be OK.
There’s a lot more there, but i don’t really feel like going into it… But needless to say, my childhood completely shaped who i am now and why i’m doing what i’m doing.
I did a Google image search and found pictures of you where you are sporting various styles of hats, in marketing there is either black or white and it is extremely boring. I believe it’s this colorful personality that brands you “Queen of Social Networks”, thanks for chatting with us!
I love hats. Plus, i’m always f*cking freezing. I wear my hats in my own home as much as i wear them out. I usually sleep with a hat on. I definitely learned that lesson that most of your heat leaves through your heads. When i was on vacation in Hawaii last week, there was no need for a fur hat but it took me all of 24 hours before i had purchased a cowboy hat. So my face got absolutely no tan. Oops.
I don’t know if i’m queen of social networks but my boss at Yahoo! loves to call me queen of hipster sparkle which always makes me roll my eyes but it’s kinda entertaining.
danah
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