Comments on: Facebook is open

By: jody

jody — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:56:59 +0000

I agree with BHB I’m actually very excited about context clash, esp. how it occurs on facebook’s newsfeed. Let me provide an example: I’m the type of social person that thrives in many diff. mutually exclusive social groups. ie in high school I might possess one persona/vocality within a preppy group and another one all together within an urban culture group. I was always interested in bringing my diff. groups of friends together to sort of “show everyone that they would actually get along well” but that sort of thing never really works like you imagine it. As a result, I was often put in situations where I would have to engage in say a conversation with the preps that subtley dissed urban culture or even worse the people in that group (my other friends) and in most cases I would agree or at least not openly disagree because announcing that kind of context clash openly, live and in the moment is an uncomfortable thing to do (esp. for a high schooler). Facebook on the other hand mediates these context clashes, so instead of having to stand up to my preppy friends and say, yeah I rap, and have them laugh expecting it to be a joke, I can simply post a video of me rapping and know that the context clash will eventually occur when they see the video, but that I won’t have to be there in that one awkward moment when they discover this other side of me that maybe doesnt fit the image of who theyd like me to be. Conversely, they see a more honest, full picture of who I really am, and perhaps (after a moments hesitation) are able accept this new image of me and thus we can be more honest with each other in person as a result. Moreover, because I don’t know when this personalized context clash will occur I proceed into real life social situations with a new confidence born from revealing myself to others, whether or not they’ve actually seen the conflicting artifacts I’ve offered up. Thus, I’ve opened up to everyone and no one at the same time, it’s both anonymous and highly personal confession (taking the positive from both aspects in my mind).

This applies to the new adult population of facebook as well b/c, while I can limit certain context clashes with privacy features, in most cases I would rather know that context clashes will come eventually but without my knowledge and without that in the moment awkwardness. In this way I don’t mind, say, my mom seeing a crude comment I’ve left on a friend’s wall because as long as this crude side of me is mediated by the digital/temporal separation of facebook it lessens the offending awkwardness of the encounter and leaves my mother only discovering that perhaps, when not around her I possess a more vulgar vocality (ie getting caught cursing around my grandma is way worse then her discovering that I curse elsewhere– facebook allows a context clash somewhere in between those two, and I believe in a lot of cases it’s a desirable one). After all, at my core wouldn’t I like my mom to KNOW that this other side of me exists. Wouldnt that benefit our relationship, if only in a tacit sense.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, just really interested by this stuff…. obviously, haha.

By: T-Rad

T-Rad — Tue, 01 May 2007 06:43:17 +0000

make friends, not facebook.

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 01 May 2007 06:41:52 +0000

its all bullshit

By: Louisa

Louisa — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:22:14 +0000

Guys, what do people think about the option of paid-subscription models for social networks? I’d love to know what people’s opinions were? Pros and cons?

Also, what are people’s opinions on limiting social networks to certain industries, retaining a highly level of exclusivity? A good option? Quality not quantity… But makes less money I guess…

By: Emil Sotirov

Emil Sotirov — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:24:52 +0000

“Community” is a group centered thing. “Social network” is a person centered thing. I can imagine a desirable natural segregation of “neighborhoods” in a social network balanced by various degrees of pseudo accidental mutual exposure and intermixing – similar to how this happens in cities. This doesn’t happen in a “community.” It all depends on how we design the system and the interface. So, what are we talking about?

By: Matt Waxman

Matt Waxman — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 00:51:03 +0000

if an all-access facebook will ruin its sacred purity, does this propose that a limit to growth exists in social networking communities?

does exclusivity define place?

do borders define contexts?

are population levels, and one’s origins, related to the quality of life for a real urban or virtual cyberspace place?

By: Randy

Randy — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 12:20:41 +0000

I believe this opening is following up on the news that Facebook may be for sale. Opening up the registration system to inflate the population of the site to inflate the perceived value of the network. If this is the intent the move is counterproductive. The value in Facebook was having a sealed off exclusive community for those who are students. I’d just like to know who in the world suggested the idea.

By: David

David — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 05:44:43 +0000

I think it’s because for-profit entities (especially in this space) work on quantity, not quality.

Differentiation by features is much harder than simply reducing cost-per-user by growing the denominator. I.e., adding more users with the same features makes money – adding more features while only realizing a small growth curve doesn’t.

A paid-subscription model breaks this mold – but is that a survivable direction for controlled-context social networking sites? My gut says no.

By: zephoria

zephoria — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 03:13:32 +0000

David^2 – why does growth have to be about extending to everyone? Why does extending to new students each year not count as growth? Why not come up with new ways to focus on students-only?

Do i think that any community site can grow to a truly global scale and still function? No. I think that context collision will always alienate some people.

By: crzwdjk

crzwdjk — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 11:42:02 +0000

I had always thought that the success of Facebook was due in large part to the fact that it was restricted to only college students, and so was designed with college students in mind, and was useful to them. Having it limited to schools was useful, because it meant that you could look up people whom you see every day but don’t really know, for example. It’d probably work equally well in any other institutional type environment, such as high schools, and corporations. But opening it up to the whole world loses pretty much the one thing that made the facebook the facebook, and in doing so it becomes just another social network site, like myspace but without the abominable web design and without at many people.