When I started this project in July 2007, the economy was vastly different than it is now. Like the dot-com boom before it, Web 2.0 was hyped as a revolutionary schism with the past that would transform the world for the better. Those claims are heard less frequently today. People who spoke lovingly of a new age of participation and equality facilitated by Web 2.0 have begun to contribute to nuanced critiques of social software, critiques that involve visual culture analysis, the commercial contexts of user interaction, and larger cultural impacts. (Even Facebook's IPO did not turn out to be as lucrative as promised.) This project was conceived as a response to a celebratory rhetoric that has, to a certain extent, diminished.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 47