Both USAToday and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution cited ibiblian and SILSian social networking researcher Fred Stutzman recently. It’s not surprising that they would seek out and cite Fred and his work, but to have it cited on the Sports pages! That’s something else entirely!

Although the stories are more of the continuing moral panic over students’ use of social networking sites and the unabashed transparency with which students live their lives on the Web especially in their use of MySpace and FaceBook, the fact that they appeared not on a lifestyles page or a tech page or a news page or even on a business page shows that social networking has gone very mainstream.

Blogs and social networking sites have been having their runs on various newspaper comics; Boondocks recently did a bit on MySpace. There is not much ink left unspilt.

My guess: Next for stop social networking is on the TV pages. Don’t expect to see social networking in classifieds tho. Craigslist might make sense but not the vanishing classifieds.

Fred has smarter things to say about his research on his blog.