Broadband Advisor

Social-networking glossary

Add: The act of gaining a new friend, and social networking's common currency. "Dude, thanks for the add," may be added to your profile

Block: To configure your social-networking service to prevent a particular user from contacting you or viewing your profile

Check-in: In mobile social networking, an electronic message that alerts your group of friends that you've arrived at the local pub and are ready to party

Cyberbully: To attack, harass or ridicule a fellow community member via posted text, video or other electronic means

Defriend: The opposite of adding a friend, and the very epitome of coldness. Same as unfriend

Faceslam: To ignore a Facebook friend request from someone you don't know and/or wish would just go away

Facestalk: To scan, jealously, the Facebook profiles and photos of people you know, are going out with or are going out with in your dreams

Friend: To request that another user add you as a friend — sometimes an awkward moment for the networker

MySpace suicide: The act of deleting one's MySpace account forever

Nudge: On Twitter, to send a message notifying someone you follow that they're not posting frequently enough

Poke: On Facebook, a feature that lets users know that you're looking at their profile (and possibly stalking them)

RL: Real life. The world of flesh, bone and face-to-face meetings that existed before the web browser

Slurping: The ability of most social networks to import your web-based mail contacts to see if any are already on the service. Watch out for slurpers that spam contacts with invites

Twitterrhea: A condition resulting in an excess of Twitter posts. For more jargon, see the Twitter Fan Wiki's glossary.