Danah Boyd: MySpace as the new Public Space

Update: Fred Stutzman of Unit Structures also ran a panel on Social Networking at PDF. There's no video, but I'd encourage everyone to go read his take on the opening up of the FaceBook API.
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Last week I was at the Personal Democracy Conference, a yearly geekathon for politics and technology folks. The snooze-fest that was Thomas Friedman aside, there were some really interesting presentations, including this one by Dana Boyd on "Digitally Shaking Hands:"

So what happens is they gather online. They gather online to hang out with their friends. They gather online to jockey and share material. And they gather online to figure out what's going on in this world.

So if you want to reach out to them it's not about holding a rally for the young people, because often they don't come out, because it's not part of their narrative. But they will come out to the online spaces as a place to hang out.

Danah has great advice for campaigns looking to engage young voters online.

Other highlights of the morning included Lawrence Lessig about the false either/or choice in our copyright debate, and Yochai Benkler on the networked public sphere and what it means for information production and dissemination in our society. I encourage everyone to nerd out.