Cyber-sociology: Applying sociological imagination online

Cyber-sociology is a fast developing field. Large internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are hiring sociologists in order to understand and harness the social power of the Internet. Marc Smith a sociologist at Microsoft Research believes that thanks to the vast amount of sociological data on the internet it is possible for sociologists to apply their sociological imagination. He cites the example of Netscan, a unit of Microsoft Research that makes available sociological data gleaned from internet online communities such as Usenet to the researchers.

According to the NetScan website the Netscan System "provides detailed reports on the activity of Usenet newsgroups, the authors who participate in them, and the conversation threads that emerge from their activity. Using the Netscan tool users can get reports about any newsgroup for any day, week, month, quarter, or year, since September 1999".

Read Marc Smith's interview with Tech Review website here.