 In contemporary accounts of the social web it is often argued that we are witnessing a revolution due to the intense proliferation of social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and more recently Google+. This revolution however is not assumed to be one of battlefields and bloodshed perhaps as we're currently witnessing in the Middle East but rather one of creativity, new modes of production and consumption as well as changed condition for social interaction and self-expression. Along with these changes it seems to be the case that the prosumer, and I need to do like this, that the prosumer has emerged as the social act of our times with a strong desire for creativity, playfulness and communication. Sharing is caring it is frequently said, well at the same time striking a balance between uses of social network sites and the human being as such. Should this idea be regarded as a new mode of solidarity or does it rather point at the very conditions under which younger people of today are forming their identities through social relationships and technology? Or is it the case as Professor David Gauntlet has suggested that there's an obvious relationship between making and connecting and furthermore that making things and sharing them in the world leads to an increased engagement and connection with our social and physical environments as he argued. There's no doubt that the social web has provided a vast array of possibilities for creative self-expression and various kinds of technologically mediated forms of interaction but it is decisive not to be blinded by the ecstatic and sometimes prophetic interpretations of the ongoing so-called revolution. Rather I find it important to critically assess another set of properties of social network sites and their implications. So that is why I would like to today highlight a number of characteristics of social network sites that are crucial for the creation of future media and that also takes the interrelationship between design, product development and processes of identity formation seriously. But these characteristics are not simply concerned with technology but rather the social embedding of technology as well as the social consequences of technology which both have a deep impact on the continuous processes of identity formation and especially among younger people for whom media use is often a question of hanging out, messing around and geeking out as the title of one recently published research report suggests. But although being highly diverse in its various manifestations the social web in general and social network sites in particular mark a fundamental shift in the ways in which online interaction is organized. Having once been formed around communities of interests social organization is now taking place with an individual as a nexus. These sites are often used for self-expression or self-presentation and social interaction indeed but this is often done through the putting on display of one's personal social connections and by traversing the connections and interactions of others. So in this sense we're truly dealing with a utterly social yet clearly individualized phenomenon that to some extent promotes narcissistic practices concerning nothing but me, me, me and me. As several research reports have demonstrated social network sites are often used to maintain rather than initiate social relationships. In that sense these sites could well be described as communicative playgrounds on which users have a possibility to engage in various kinds of social interplay. And many critics and researchers alike have warned that these possibilities come at a price since they're nowadays a large commercial actors involved in the structuration of everyday life activities of the users. I think it would be silly to ignore such an important facet of this state of affairs since harvesting personal information and designing mechanisms for communication is part of the business models for companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. And then I think it could be said that as Professor Manuel Castells once argued that we are dealing with a possibility to interact at a relatively low price. But more importantly even though the price might be low is that when we talk about social network sites and the social web in general these descriptions tend to lean toward a description and an understanding of mainly front end characteristics and thus ignoring the fundamental importance of back end functionalities. I think it's crucial to have in mind the social implications of these two parts front end and back end working together since the manipulation and calculation of harvested personal information become part of the processes that structure and so to speak form the very boundaries that constrain social experience as well as the self as such. In this sense understanding users or understanding youth in order to design the next gadget or application is precisely as important as it is to understand how these products partake in the continuous construction of youth identities. So if we have to understand social network sites as playgrounds for social interaction deeply embedded in the everyday life of users then it follows that they are quite important for the continuous processes of identity formation among the younger population for which social interactions and different forms of social and symbolic exchanges are fundamentally important. It would be easy to argue that these generations nowadays have a possibility to produce and consume without any real historic counterpart but such an argument tend to neglect questions of what happens back end in front of a front in favor of front end buyers. Using Facebook as an example of this line of thought is this clear that we're dealing with quite an appealing design that strives at providing a personalized social experience for the individual user. The idea is to deliver social and symbolic content in various forms based on different calculations of previous social interactions and actions. What this means is that the social experience is indeed at risk of becoming grounded in itself rather than in the highly diverse and divergent nature of social flows and the contradictory inputs that we meet in everyday life. So a streamlined social experience is of course pleasurable but is it desirable provided that social network sites are an important part of everyday life among younger people developers and designers alike truly have a responsibility in combining their commercial interests with the potential social consequences of their work. Not the least if they want to avoid the tyranny of the new and instead strive at establishing long-term relationships based on trust and mutual challenges. Such a venture is not simply a question of conflating generational identity with technological identity but rather to understand the complex interplay between users and products. The well-known Marvel character Spider-Man and I assume that everyone who knows about this character once said with great power comes great responsibility and perhaps this thought is worthwhile even in the context of future media. If social network sites and similar applications will be an integral part of future media then it follows that design and development is not merely a question of designing cool and practical applications and services. It is also and most importantly a question of designing the structural conditions of social space as such. So in that respect it's critical to never lose track of the social embedding of technology as well as the social and indeed psychological consequences of it being used.