Abstract
During the last few years, personal and social media forms have blossomed online, attracting ever more users. Newsgroups, mailing lists, and MUDS (multiuser dungeons) in the 1980s and early 1990s were populated by a narrow segment of technologically interested Internet users. But email, instant messaging, blogs, photo- and video-sharing, and social network sites (SNSs) have become mainstream phenomena. In this chapter, (inter)personal tools for communication are labeled “personal media” to account for media forms that facilitate mediated interpersonal communication and personalized expressions (as a contrast to mass media) (see also Lüders, 2008 ). The success of online personal media seems to reflect a human willingness to embrace tools that support social interaction between offline meetings (just as we have previously embraced letters and telephones) (see Licoppe & Smoreda, 2005 ). Whereas diaries, letters, telephones, and snapshot photography are also examples of personal media, the focus here is on online personal media, as their networked qualities suggest important changes if compared to the historical significance of the analogue antecedents. These changes and the growing importance of online sociability, particularly among young users (as suggested by e.g. Henderson & Gilding, 2004 ; Lenhart et al., 2007 ; Lewis & Fabos, 2005 ; Ofcom, 2008
