Social-networking manners

A Telegraph columnist understandably asks, basically: What's wrong with this picture - a stuffy old publisher "identified in the popular mind with ... the appropriate usage of pudding forks and cheese knives" writing rules for polite social networking? But somebody at Debrett's must have a profile in MySpace, Bebo, or Facebook. They're pretty good rules, actually - except maybe for the one that says you're supposed to always use a phone or card to wish a friend happy birthday, not a comment on his/her wall. However, Washington Post writer Kim Hart, blogged this question: "When it comes to maintaining relationships, do social networks let us 'cheat' a little too much?" She was writing about a just-released survey by the Consumer Internet Barometer finding that "common pet peeves among social-networking regulars include 'lack of manners'." Debrett's five "golden rules" are at the bottom of this other Telegraph report on the subject. It'd be very interesting to ask a teenage focus group what's missing. And the Telegraph columnist's right, of course, that "codes of behaviour emerge from the users [of social sites], and are constantly modified by them." It's just that some older users don't always want to wait that long.