With Cathy Horn holding down the Fashion Week fort, the Styles had a chance to break out an article on their favorite topic: trends. And while we don’t normally hone in on the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times, when Warren St. John pens an in-depth article on the status of Facebook (with the term TMI in the headline no less), we can’t help but be drawn in.

Facebook is changing the face of social networking, claims the piece, with the site’s additional newsfeed feature. The new “feed” documents all blog updates, friend adds, photo uploads, and just about every other open book feature available on Facebook, and sends that update to everyone in a member’s network. This is all truly fascinating and all, really, but what struck us as the “trend” in the piece was the discovery that there are actually people out there whose job it is to track these changes.

Those who study social networking sites say that users’ comfort with revealing intimate details about themselves comes in part from a perception that in the din of life online, there is a kind of privacy through anonymity …

“The issue isn’t transparency but scope,” said Clay Shirky, who teaches in the interactive telecommunications program at New York University. “People are willing to be transparent to friends, as long as they are in control. Facebook violated both of those conditions.”

Those who study social networking sites? Study them. We always knew New York University was progressive with it’s make-up-your-own-major stuff. But this “interactive communications” sounds like it might be an actual department at the school. Um, we just hope anyone who majors in that decides to minor in something that will help them get into law school.

When Information Becomes T.M.I. [Warren St. John, New York Times]