This article from Christian Dalsgaard, from Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark, talk about the Social networking sites: Transparency in online education.
The central characteristic of social networking sites is a combination of personalization and socialization. This combination has a potential to facilitate transparency between students.
Transparency is a prerequisite for distance students to work cooperatively. Transparency means that students are visible to each other as potential partners and resources.
Transparency between students means that they have insight into each other’s work, thoughts, and productions. Not least within online education, transparency is not a given. Students might work at a distance and individually, and, thus, they are not necessarily aware of the activities of other students. In their individual work, however, students write notes, search for literature, find relevant websites, write assignments, etc. This information and these products are relevant to other students.

An interesting aspect of social interaction in social networking sites is that the starting point is the individual or personal. This is in opposition to discussion forums, in which communication always takes place in a shared forum. In a social networking site each individual has a personal page and profile, which the individual develops and modifies. Other people can view these pages and follow activities of their ”friends”. In other words, actions within a social networking site are transparent.

Social networking sites: Transparency in online education (6pages)
Christian Dalsgaard
http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf (Accessed February 20, 2010)