Social Econ Blog

Last night, a friend pointed me to a feature in the New Yorker on facebook.com. Reading it, reminded me of a blown opportunity. During the spring of 2004, right after the facebook launched, many students sought to write their term papers on facebook related topics. The best idea I had (that was not feasible to do as a term paper) was examining the effect of the facebook on social interactions and social networks. The idea was to get out ahead of the facebook and do baseline surveys about social interactions and social participation at colleges before the facebook launched on those campuses. Then, we would compare changes in social markets on campuses with the facebook to the changes at campuses that didn't yet have the facebook (this is known as a differences in differences approach). Right about now, this project would probably be producing results and would have made a nice addition to all these articles on facebook that have come out recently.

Oh well.