ABSTRACT
To cope with such a diachronic approach, this paper will fi rst give a defi nition of personal publishing, introduce its underlying concepts and work out its most central characteristics (Introduction). Following this, it will discuss key features of SNS and point to two central functions, carried out in the documentation of a particular social network as well as in the textual self-presentation of individuals (Web 2.0, Social Software and Personal Publishing). It will then be demonstrated that on a functional level SNS bear some striking similarities to the poetry album2 and its more recent equivalent, the friendship book. Drawing on the systemic functional understanding of genre as social action will then help to specify an intermedial comparison, accounting for the obligatory communicative stages bound to the respective texts (SNS as a Particular Form of Personal Publishing). Eventually the paper will sum up its central arguments and present an outlook on future research.
