The situation is exacerbated online because most social networking sites, despite the term networking, are usually flat, broadcast spaces. (Not surprising when you consider that Facebook started with an undergraduate user base: schools are themselves flat, superconductive social spaces.) We need a more complex social topology including venues and pigeonholes to accommodate intimacy. (viz intimacy gradients in A Pattern Language, etc.)

At Handmeon, we are experimenting with the idea of not providing any notification of friend requests – you have to actively check for them – as a way of providing plausible deniability for non-reciprocation. But getting rid of an unwanted friend once you have adopted them strikes me as a far tougher problem. Having friend links expire in some way might help but clear out some dead wood, but doesn’t handle the burdock and cholla types. And it doesn’t address the fundamental fact that human social space just isn’t flat.

One solution is to learn to stride remorselessly through life like a double-edged razor blade. (Not that I am claiming to have learned this art, mind you.)

Personally, I think that we need to start constructing social networking sites in which the members can do their own urban design. This will become more an more important as the current generation of facebook and myspace user base moves (statistically and demographically) in the direction of the nest.

Blogged about boyd’s law here:
http://www.boston.com/business/blog/filter/2007/11/creepy_excowork.html
It even made it into the *gasp* paper version of the Globe on Monday.

Love. It.

Your vacation sounds GREAT!

Cheers,
Maura

totally boyd’s law.