apophenia :: yasns

December 29, 2009

Race and Social Network Sites: Putting Facebook's Data in Context

A few weeks ago, Facebook's data team released a set of data addressing a simple but complex question: How Diverse is Facebook? Given my own work over the last two years concerning the intersection of race/ethnicity/class and social network sites, I feel the need to respond. And, with pleasure, I'm going to respond by sharing a draft of a new paper.

But first, I want to begin by thanking the Facebook data team for actually making this data available for public dialogue. Far too few companies are willing to share their internal analyses, especially about topics that make people uncomfortable. I was disappointed that so many academics immediately began critiquing Facebook rather than appreciating the glimpse that we get into the data they get to see. So thank you Facebook data team!

There are many different ways to collect quantitative data involving categories like race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, etc. None of them are perfect. Even asking people to self-identify can be fraught, especially when someone is asked to place themselves into a box. Ask a self-identified queer boi to identity into the binaries of "female/male" and "gay/straight" and you'll see nothing short of explosive anger. Race certainly isn't any prettier, let alone ethnicity or class. The salience of these qualities also depends on what we're trying to measure, what we're trying to say. For example, if we're talking about people who experience being targets of racism, should we concern ourselves more with self-identification or external labeling? At the coarsest level, we often assume race to boil down to skin color, meaning that we have to take into account how people read race, how they experience race, how they identify with race. We must always remember that race is a social construct and one's experiences of race are shaped by how one perceives themselves in relation to others and how others perceive them. And the very notion of race differs across the globe.

Of course, this is bloody messy. And ethnicity and class are even harder to locate because self-identification isn't always the best measure. Heck, while Americans have learned to self-identify with race (thanks to countless forms), we aren't typically asked to self-identify with ethnicity or class. So these are pretty murky territories. As a result, scholars and demographers and marketers and many others have different ways of trying to measure these categories. None are perfect. We can debate endlessly about which is better but, personally, I think that does the conversation a disservice.

In trying to measure race (and, partially, ethnicity) of its users without having self-identification, Facebook decided to use a statistical technique known as mixture-modeling to make a best guess as to the racial makeup of its user base. They go to great lengths explaining what they did, but it is this graph that we should be attentive to:

This graph highlights that those American users most likely to be white were overrepresented on Facebook until last year while those most likely to be Asian have been overrepresented as far back as they are measuring. Yet, the two lines that should pique our interest are the blue and red lines, highlighting that those most likely to be black and Hispanic have been underrepresented until very recently. In other words, 2009 is the year in which Facebook went "mainstream" among all measured racial/ethnic groups in the U.S.

Folks keep asking me if this surprises me. It does not. This very much matches what I'm seeing in the field. (It also confirms what I was seeing in 2006-2007.) But it also doesn't tell the whole story. Numbers never do. MySpace has definitely declined among young users in the U.S., especially in the last 12 months, but race - and ethnicity and socio-economic status - still inflect people's experiences with these technologies. Just because Facebook has become broadly adopted does not mean that what everyone experiences on Facebook is the same. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see Facebook data that broke down app usage by demographic data (age, location, gender, and their measure of race). Given what I'm seeing in the field, I'd expect you'd see variation. I'd also expect to see variation in terms of how the service is accessed - via mobile, web, 3rd party APIs, etc. As young people tour me through their Facebook experience, I'm regularly reminded that different groups have wholly different experiences with the same service. As Facebook has become a platform, it is no longer reasonable to simply think about access. There's also a different issue at play... perception. People perceive certain practices to be universal because "everyone they know" is doing it that way. One of the hardest parts of my job is to explain to people that what they are seeing, what they are experiencing, is not the same as what others are. Even if they're using the same tools.

When the "digital divide" conversations started up, folks boiled down the discussion to being one of access. If only everyone had access, everything would be hunky dory. We're closer to universal access today than ever before, but access is not bringing us the magical utopian panacea that we all dreamed of. Henry Jenkins has rightly pointed out that we see the emergence of a "participation gap" in that people's participation is of different quantity and quality depending on many other factors. Social media takes all of this to a new level. It's not just a question of what you get to experience with your access, but what you get to experience with your friend group with access. In other words, if you're friends with 24/7 always-on geeks, what you're experiencing with social media is very different than if you're experiencing social media in a community where your friends all spend 12+ hours a day doing a form of labor that doesn't allow access to internet technologies. Facebook's data provides a glimpse into how Facebook access has become mainstream. It is the modern day portal. But I would argue that what people experience with this tool - and with the other social media assets they use - looks very different based on their experience.

Many folks think that I care about access. Don't get me wrong - access is important. But I'm much more concerned about how racist and classist attitudes are shaping digital media, how technology reinforces inequality, and how our habit of assuming that everyone uses social media just like we do reinforces social divisions that we prefer to ignore. This issue became apparent to me when doing fieldwork because of the language that young people were using to differentiate MySpace and Facebook. Adoption differences alone were never the whole story. Ever since I released my controversial blog essay 2.5 years ago, I have been working to write up my data and analysis in a meaningful way. Doing so has not been easy. I've been very uncomfortable handling my own data, trying to treat it in a manner that is respectful of the teens that I interviewed and the dynamics that I witnessed. Thankfully, Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White gave me the space to work out these issues. The fruit of my labor will be published in an upcoming Routledge anthology edited by them called Digital Race Anthology. With their permission, I am sharing with you a working draft of the article that I have struggled to produce:

"White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook"

In this article, I explore the themes I've been discussing for years but focus specifically on the language that young people used to differentiate MySpace and Facebook and how that language can be understood through the historical dynamics of segregation in the U.S. My decision to use the "white flight" frame is meant to be provocative, to encourage the reader to think about the rhetoric that we're currently using and its parallels to earlier times. For example, how we employ "safety" as a way of marking turf and segmenting populations.

Given the conversations prompted by Facebook's data, I felt the need to share this work-in-progress. Please feel free to comment or share your thoughts in whatever format makes sense to you.

Category: yasns

Tags: race class ethnicity inequality facebook myspace youth

   

Posted by zephoria at 1:05 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

June 30, 2009

PDF Talk: "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online"

Two years ago this week, I wrote a controversial essay in an attempt to locate divisions that I was seeing play out between MySpace and Facebook. This week, at the Personal Democracy Forum, I revisited these ideas in a new talk:

The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online

Needless to say, this talk provoked some discussion which is why I thought it might be helpful to share it. What you have here is the crib from the talk. Comments are VERY much welcome!

Category: yasns

Tags: Facebook MySpace youth PDF democracy politics class race

   

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January 18, 2008

let's define our terms: what is a "social networking technology"?

In writing Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, Nicole Ellison and I wrote many iterations of the definition of the term "social network sites" and why we chose to use this instead of "social networking sites." For a good 20 versions, we had included this statement:

"Because the term 'networking' emphasizes relationship initiation, often with strangers, it can and has been expanded to refer to any site that allows people to communicate with people that they do not know, including dating sites, chatrooms, community sites, and bulletin boards.

This statement got edited out during the review phase because we were told that no one actually believed that "social networking sites" included all of these other things. The current debate surrounding the Economist's debate on "social networking technologies" and education (my discussion of it is here) has shown otherwise. If you read the comments on my post and follow the blogs of others discussing the debate, you will find that there is unbelievable confusion about what constitutes "social networking." [e.g., 1, 2, 3]

For their part, neither The Economist nor the respondents did little to define their terms. The Economist's question concerns "social networking technologies" and their explanation opens up with "Given that MySpace and Facebook are ubiquitous..." and then goes on. From my POV, they implicitly equate "social networking technologies" with "MySpace and Facebook." Yet, clearly, there's all sorts of fuzziness about whether we're talking about social network sites, social software, social media, collaborative software, or anything that enables any interaction with another human being.

Unfortunately, it makes the "debate" really confusing. When I posted my response, I focused on "social network sites" since that is what I took The Economist to mean by their equation. Not surprisingly given the confusion, I've been critiqued as being too narrow and not including wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, Google documents, Blackboard, etc.

I want to make something clear: I think that a lot of social technology is extremely valuable in the classroom, but that is not the question that I thought that The Economist was asking. Furthermore, I think that our failure to define our terms makes it damn near impossible to have a functional conversation about the actual issues. This is extremely frustrating. This is also why Nicole and I put so much effort into creating a workable definition of "social network sites." We know that there's confusion and we strongly believe that without a definition, we cannot actually have a meaningful conversation about actual substance. The ongoing use of "social networking" has been damaging to any productive conversation, both in the academy and in startup circles (who all want to be the next "social networking" app, even if there are no "Friends" involved).

So, here's my question for all of you who use the term "social networking technologies" -- what do you mean by that?

Category: yasns

Tags: definition terms socialnetworking

   

Posted by zephoria at 12:19 PM | Comments (36) | TrackBack (0)

January 15, 2008

The Economist Debate on Social "Networking"

The Economist is doing an "Oxford-style debate" on the following proposition:

"Social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to
educational methods, in and out of the classroom"

Given that MySpace and Facebook are ubiquitous, can social networking be defined as the "collective power of community to help inform perspectives that would not be unilaterally formed" or is it simply a distraction for students? Can these tools could be used in the classroom?

While I think that the Economist's question is quite intriguing (albeit a bit problematically defined), I was sorely disappointed with the two responses.

On the Pro side is Ewan McIntosh. He argues that SNSs are about "helping learners become more world-aware, more communicative, learning from each other, understanding first hand what makes the world go around." He talks about the use of mini-social networks for media sharing, but his description sounds more like blogs than SNSs to me. He (rightly) critiques the archaic educational styles, talking vaguely about web and SNSs without really explaining how the latter can help reform the former.

On the Con side is Michael Bugeja. He talks about interfaces, how students might misuse technology, and about how Facebook and MySpace are all simply about revenue generation for their respective companies. He then makes an odd techno-determinist claim and then talks about how pedagogy changes to fit interfaces. He then asks a bunch of (problematic) questions.

Sadly, I think that both completely missed the point. I'm frustrated with Ewan for collapsing all social technologies into "social networking" and I'm frustrated with Michael for being so afraid of technology that he lets technology dictate his reality. Given my irritation with both of them, I figured I should try to make a stab at what my response to this question would be.

danah's response to said proposition

In their current incarnation, social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook and MySpace should not be integrated directly into the classroom. That said, they provide youth with a valuable networked public space to gather with their peers. Depending on the role of school in their lives, youth leverage these structures for educational purposes - asking questions about homework, sharing links and resources, and even in some cases asking their teachers for information outside of the classroom. SNSs do not make youth engage educationally; they allow educationally-motivated youth with a structure to engage educationally.

Social network sites do not help most youth see beyond their social walls. Because most youth do not engage in "networking," they do not meet new people or see the world from a different perspective. Social network sites reinforce everyday networks, providing a gathering space when none previously existed.

Educational pedagogy has swung over the years between focusing on individual-centered learning, group learning, and peer-to-peer learning. If you take a peer-to-peer learning approach, you are inherently valuing the social networks that youth have and maintain, or else you are encouraging them to build one. These networks are mediated and reinforced through SNSs. If there is pedagogical value to encouraging peers to have strong social networks, then there is pedagogical value in supporting their sociable practices on SNSs.

When it comes to socializing with friends, youth prefer in-person (unregulated) encounters. They turn to SNSs when they can't get together with their friends en masse or when they can't get together without surveilling adults. By and large, there are few free spaces where youth can gather with their friends en masse and, even then, inevitably a chunk of parents refuse to let them, thereby destroying cluster effects. So, of course, they turn to SNSs. School is one of the few times when they can get together with their friends and they use every unscheduled moment to socialize - passing time, when the teacher's back is turned, lunch, bathroom breaks, etc. They are desperately craving an opportunity to connect with their friends; not surprisingly, their use of anything that enables socialization while at school is deeply desired. This is why they text during classes. They go onto SNSs during the day to write to friends who have different schedules or to write to the whole group if a portion of them are on a different lunch. Given how regulated youth are, any open space where socializing is possible will be taken up by socializing; it's often the only place they can see their friends. This isn't something that the schools can fix, but they also shouldn't be surprised when group time turns into gossip time.

I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why social network sites (or networking ones) should be used in the classroom. Those tools are primarily about socializing, with media and information sharing there to prop up the socialization process (much status is gained from knowing about the cool new thing). I haven't even heard of a good reason why social network site features should be used in the classroom. What is the value of knowing who is friends with who or creating a profile when you already know all of your classmates?

This not to say that technology doesn't belong in the classroom. Information access tools like Wikipedia and Google are tremendously valuable for getting access to content and should be strongly encouraged and taught through the lens of media literacy. Email, IM, or other communication tools can be super useful for distributing content to the group or between individuals or even providing a channel for group discussion (in-class or out). Blogging tools and group sharing tools are also quite valuable. Having to produce for the group instead of the teacher can work as a powerful incentive; most youth don't want to be embarrassed in front of their peers and pressure to perform can be leveraged to the teacher's advantage. But why social network sites? To the degree that they support blogging and group sharing, sure... but that's not the key point of them at all. They key features that make them unique are: profiles plus visible, articulated and surfable friends' lists. I simply don't get why these are of value in the classroom.

I'm not saying that social network sites have no value. Quite the contrary. But their value is about the kinds of informal social learning that is required for maturation - understanding your community, learning the communicate with others, working through status games, building and maintaining friendships, working through personal values, etc. All too often we underestimate these processes because, traditionally, they have happened so naturally. Yet, what's odd about today's youth culture is that we've systematically taken away the opportunities for socialization. And yet we wonder why our kids are so immature compared to kids from other cultures. Social network sites are popular because youth are trying to take back the right to be social, even if it has to happen in interstitial ways. We need to recognize that not all learning is about book learning - brains mature through experience, including social experiences.

Yes, there are problems with technology and with technology in the classroom. Anyone critical of capitalism has a right to be critical of commercial social network sites and the economic processes that got us here. But don't blame the SNSs - they didn't create the obscenities of the market, but they are bound by them. Also, don't forget that the current educational system was structured to meet the needs of the market, to create good consumers and good laborers. It ain't pretty, and the privatization of education and educational testing is downright scary, but it's a systems problem, not a technology problems.

There are innumerable inequalities in terms of educational technology access, just as there are huge inequalities in nearly every aspect of education. How many schools lack pencils, textbooks, teachers? Again, it's terrible, but it's not the technology's fault. We all have a responsibility to rethink education and figure out how to equip all classrooms with the tools needed for giving students the best education possible, including teachers and technology. Don't devalue technology simply because there are currently inequalities; no one would go around devaluing teachers using the same logic.

Finally, please adult world, I beg you... stop fearing and/or fetishizing technology. Neither approach does us any good. Technology is not the devil, nor is it the panacea you've been waiting for. It's a tool. Just like a pencil. Figure out what it's good for and leverage that to your advantage. Realize that there are interface problems and figure out how to work around them to meet your goals. Tools do not define pedagogy, but pedagogy can leverage tools. The first step is understanding what the technology is about, when and where it is useful, and how it can and will be manipulated by users for their own desires.

Update: I added a related post that is relevant to this discussion: let's define our terms: what is a "social networking technology"?

Category: yasns

Tags: education youth technology

   

Posted by zephoria at 6:17 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack (0)

December 2, 2007

boyd's law of social network sites

::giggle:: While I was off the grid, Cory Doctorow created a law of social network sites and named it after me:

boyd's law: "Adding more users to a social network [site] increases the probability that it will put you in an awkward social circumstance."

This comes from a brilliant column that he wrote for InformationWeek about how the Facebook communication technology (combined with their not-so-open platform strategy) resemble AOL's old segregation/segmentation approach to users. (Remember the days when AOL users couldn't email anyone who didn't have an AOL account?) Embedded in this discussion is a concern for how social network sites are extremely socially awkward. My favorite quote: "It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system."

Anyhow, I super appreciate the creation of "boyd's law," especially because I think that it applies to both social networks and social network sites. (I have to imagine that many folks are having a field day thinking about who all should and shouldn't be invited to holiday parties right about now.)

Category: yasns

Tags: socialnetworksites

   

Posted by zephoria at 9:45 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

November 12, 2007

It's Live! New JCMC on Social Network Sites

It gives me unquantifiable amounts of joy to announce that the JCMC special theme issue on "Social Network Sites" is now completely birthed. It was a long and intense labor, but all eight newborn articles are doing just fine and the new mommies are as proud as could be. So please, join us in our celebration by heading on over to the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communication and snuggling up to an article or two. The more you love them, the more they'll prosper!

JCMC Special Theme Issue on "Social Network Sites"
Guest Editors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/

• "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship" by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
• "Signals in Social Supernets" by Judith Donath
• "Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances" by Hugo Liu
• "Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites" by Eszter Hargittai
• "Cying for Me, Cying for Us: Relational Dialectics in a Korean Social Network Site" by Kyung-Hee Kim and Haejin Yun
• "Public Discourse, Community Concerns, and Civic Engagement: Exploring Black Social Networking Traditions on BlackPlanet.com" by Dara Byrne
• "Mobile Social Networks and Social Practice: A Case Study of Dodgeball" by Lee Humphreys
• "Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube" by Patricia Lange

Please feel free to pass this announcement on to anyone you think might find value from this special issue.

Category: yasns

Tags: articles research JCMC socialnetworksites

   

Posted by zephoria at 9:23 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

November 3, 2007

Race/ethnicity and parent education differences in usage of Facebook and MySpace

In June, I wrote a controversial blog essay about how U.S. teens appeared to be self-dividing by class on MySpace and Facebook during the 2006-2007 school year. This piece got me into loads of trouble for all sorts of reasons, forcing me to respond to some of the most intense critiques.

While what I was observing went beyond what could be quantitatively measured, certain aspects of it could be measured. To my absolute delight, Eszter Hargittai (professor at Northwestern) had collected data to measure certain aspects of the divide that I was trying to articulate. Not surprising (to me at least), what she was seeing lined up completely with what I was seeing on the ground.

Her latest article "Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites" (published as a part of Nicole Ellison and my JCMC special issue on social network sites) suggests that Facebook and MySpace usage are divided by race/ethnicity and parent education (two common measures of "class" in the U.S.). Her findings are based on a survey of 1060 first year students at the diverse University of Illinois-Chicago campus during February and March of 2007. For more details on her methodology, see her methods section.

While over 99% of the students had heard of both Facebook and MySpace, 79% use Facebook and 55% use MySpace. The story looks a bit different when you break it down by race/ethnicity and parent education:

While Eszter is not able to measure the other aspects of lifestyle that I was trying to describe that differentiate usage, she is able to show that Facebook and MySpace usage differs by race/ethnicity and parent education. These substitutes for "class" can be contested, but what is important here is that there is genuinely differences in usage patterns, even with consistent familiarity. People are segmenting themselves in networked publics and this links to the ways in which they are segmented in everyday life. Hopefully Eszter's article helps those who can't read qualitative data understand that what I was observing is real and measurable.

(We are still waiting for all of the JCMC articles from our special issue to be live on the site. Fore more information on this special issue, please see the Introduction that Nicole and I wrote: Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.)

Category: yasns

Tags: facebook myspace class article research

   

Posted by zephoria at 6:12 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

November 1, 2007

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

For over a year now, Nicole Ellison and I have been working on putting together a special issue of JCMC on "Social Network Sites." Not all of the pieces are live yet, so I'm going to wait until they are before highlighting them and encouraging you to go there. (But! If you want to get a taste, their abstracts are all up on the site as temporary holders.)

In the meantime, I wanted to announce that our introduction is live. So, go check out: Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison. Many of you helped us put together the history section (thank you!) so now you can see the completed version. This piece contains four key sections:

• a usable definition of "social network sites"
  
• a history of some of the major shifts in the development of SNSs
  
• a literature review of work done in this space
  
• a description of the articles included in the special issue
  

Given all of the emergent work in this space, we hope that this article will help scholars, businessfolk, and curious individuals get a coherent picture of what's happening in the space. Of course, as with all definitions, histories, and literature reviews, much is open to debate. We of course welcome your critique and look forward to the conversations that this piece might spark.

More soon on the rest of the special issue. Much appreciation goes out to JCMC and Susan Herring for letting us do this and helping us along the way. Likewise, I can't say enough nice things about the AMAZING Nicole Ellison. She was the most rocking co-editor/co-author ever and I can't believe how fortunate I was to get to work with her.

Category: yasns

Tags: jcmc article socialnetworksites research definition

   

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August 2, 2007

history of social network sites (a work-in-progress)

As many of you know, Nicole Ellison and I are guest editing a special issue of JCMC. As a part of this issue, we are writing an introduction that will include a description of social network sites, a brief history of them, a literature review, a description of the works in this issue, and a discussion of future research. We have decided to put a draft of our history section up to solicit feedback from those of you who know this space well. It is a work-in-progress so please bear with us. But if you have suggestions, shout out.

history of social network sites (a work-in-progress)

In particular, we want to know: 1) Are we reporting anything inaccurately? 2) What are we missing?

Category: yasns

Tags: history

   

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July 31, 2007

Research on Social Network Sites (Take 2)

A while back, I blogged a list of known research on social network sites. I've since moved that list to its own page:

Research on Social Network Sites

I'm in the middle of doing a literature review and I'm worried that I might be missing new research in this area. If you have recently published a paper on SNS-related topics or know of new research in this area that's not on my list, could you send me a link or add a citation in the comments? I'm particularly concerned that I know of very little research outside of the US and I have to imagine that there's a lot taking place there that I simply don't know about.

Category: yasns

Tags: research SNS

   

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July 25, 2007

responding to critiques of my essay on class

One month ago, I put out a blog essay that took on a life of its own. This essay addressed one of America's most taboo topics: class. Due to personal circumstances, I wasn't online as things spun further and further out of control and I had neither the time nor the emotional energy to address all of the astounding misinterpretations that I saw as a game of digital telephone took hold. I've browsed the hundreds of emails, thousands of blog posts, and thousands of comments across the web. I'm in awe of the amount of time and energy people put into thinking through and critiquing my essay. In the process, I've also realized that I was not always so effective at communicating what I wanted to communicate. To clarify some issues, I decided to put together a long response that addresses a variety of different issues.

Responding to Responses to: "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace"

Please let me know if this does or does not clarify the concerns that you've raised.

Category: yasns

Tags: class essay

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:56 PM | Comments (85) | TrackBack (0)

June 24, 2007

viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Over the last six months, i've noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.

I've been trying to figure out how to articulate this division for months. I have not yet succeeded. So, instead, I decided to write a blog essay addressing what I'm seeing. I suspect that this will be received with criticism, but my hope is that the readers who encounter this essay might be able to help me think through this. In other words, I want feedback on this piece.

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

What I lay out in this essay is rather disconcerting. Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made.

Please check out this essay and share your thoughts in the comments.

Update: I wrote a response to the critiques concerning this essay. My hope is that this will help clarify various issues people raised.

Update: I take this topic up again in Chapter 5 of my dissertation. If you are looking for data to back up this argument, check that out.

Category: yasns

Tags: facebook myspace class youth

   

Posted by zephoria at 4:36 PM | Comments (358) | TrackBack (0)

June 2, 2007

list of non-english social network sites

I'm trying to track down a list of all major non-English social network sites (definitions below). My interest in collecting this information is for an academic article on social network sites, but i suspect this information would be useful to others as well.

Cyworld: Korean
- launched 1999 as a forum, SNS by 2001
- 20 million accounts (Nov 2006)

Hevre: Hebrew

Lunarstorm: Swedish
- launched 2000
- 1.2 million accounts (Nov 2005)

Mixi: Japanese
- launched 2004 as a diary tool, SNS ?
- ?5.7 million accounts (2004)

StudiVZ: German
- launched in Oct 2005
- 950,000 accounts (Nov 2006)

QQ: Chinese
- launched 1999 as IM, SNS ?
- ?160? million accounts

If you know of ones that i'm missing, could you please add them in the comments? I will update this entry with additions. Ideally, i would also like to know a few things about each non-English site (including the ones above):

• What do they call "Friends" (both natively and English-translation)?
• Do they allow people to comment on the profile?
• When were they launched?
• Approximately how many accounts do they have?
• What is the primary age group that uses it?
• Is there anything significant or unique about the site?

Definitions:

Major: I am looking for the sites that have attracted a core population in that language. They should be relatively large in proportion to the number of speakers of that language. Think MySpace instead of Tagged.

Non-English: I realize that most sites are used by non-English speakers. I'm looking for sites that are dominant in one language where the site's infrastructure is in that language. If there are multiple languages, i want the dominant one (i.e. Cyworld as Korean not Chinese). Sites like orkut are on the fence because while it is an English site, it is the dominant Portuguese site.

Social Network Site: To count as a social network site, the site MUST have 1) a public or friends-only profile system; 2) a publicly articulated list of "Friends" who are also on the system (not blogrolls). Friends must be visible on an individual's profile and it must be possible to traverse the network graph through that list of Friends. If the site does not let you "comment" on Friends' profiles, please indicate that. This is not necessary although it is a common component. I'm not interested in dating sites, community sites, or blogging tools that do not have public profile + friends that are displayed on profiles.

If you have a site that you think fits this, please list it in the comments. The more information you can provide about the site (including links to data but not to the site), the better. I need to confirm these and it's rather hard since i don't speak most languages. Please don't put the site as the URL in your comment - place the name in the actual comment.

Finally, please, i beg you, don't use my comments as a place to advertise your new startup. I hate deleting comments but i will delete posts people make to advertise sites (as i always do). You don't get any Google juice from my comments but you do piss me off.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:22 PM | Comments (47) | TrackBack (0)

April 19, 2007

Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks (PEW Report)

I am currently in Iowa interviewing teens so i don't have time to do a proper analysis but i wanted to alert everyone to the new PEW report on social network sites: "Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace."

The majority of teens actively manage their online profiles to keep the information they believe is most sensitive away from the unwanted gaze of strangers, parents and other adults. While many teens post their first name and photos on their profiles, they rarely post information on public profiles they believe would help strangers actually locate them such as their full name, home phone number or cell phone number.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of teens with profiles (63%) believe that a motivated person could eventually identify them from the information they publicly provide on their profiles.

I will comment on this when i have my feet back on the ground, but it's a fantastic report and i think anyone interested in this topic should definitely check it out.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 12:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 13, 2007

Facebook's little digital gift

Last week, Facebook unveiled a gifting feature. For $1, you can purchase a gift for the person you most adore. If you choose to make the gift public, you are credited with that gift on the person's profile under the "gift box" region. If you choose to make the gift private, the gift is still there but there's no notice concerning who gave it.

Before getting into this, let me take a moment to voice my annual bitterness over Hallmark Holidays, particularly the one that involves an obscene explosion of pink, candy, and flowers.

The gifting feature is fantastically times to align with a holiday built around status: Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is all about pronouncing your relationship to loved ones (and those you obsess over) in the witness of others. Remember those miniature cards in elementary school? Or the carnations in high school? Listening to the radio, you'd think Valentine's Day was a contest. Who can get the most flowers? The fanciest dinner? This holiday should make most people want to crawl in bed and eat bon-bons while sobbing over sappy movies. But it works. It feeds on people's desire to be validated and shown as worthy to the people around them, even at the expense of others. It is a holiday built purely on status (under the guise of "love"). You look good when others love you (and the more the merrier).

Of course, Valentine's Day is not the only hyper-commercialized holiday. The celebration of Christ's birth is marked by massive shopping. In response, the Festival of Lights has been turned into 8 days of competitive gift giving in American Jewish culture. Acknowledging that people get old in patterns that align with a socially constructed calendar also requires presents. Hell, anything that is seen as a lifestage change requires gifts (marriage, childbirth, graduation, Bat Mitzvah, etc.).

Needless to say, gift giving is perpetuated by a consumer culture that relishes any excuse to incite people to buy. My favorite of this is the "gift certificate" - a piece of paper that says that you couldn't think of what to give so you assuaged your guilt by giving money to a corporation. You get brainwashed into believing that forcing your loved one to shop at that particular venue is thoughtful, even though the real winner is the corporation since only a fraction of those certificates are ever redeemed. No wonder corporations love gift certificates - they allow them to make bundles and bundles of money, knowing that the receiver will never come back for the goods.

But anyhow... i've gone off on a tangent... Gifts. Facebook.

Unlike Fred, i think that gifts make a lot more sense than identity purchases when it comes to micro-payments and social network sites. Sure, buying clothes in virtual systems makes sense, but what's the value of paying to deck out your profile if the primary purpose of it is to enable communication? I think that for those who actively try to craft a public identity through profiles (celebrities and fame junkies), paying to make a cooler profile makes sense. But most folks are quite content with the crap that they can do for free and i don't see them paying money to get more fancified backgrounds when they can copy/paste. That said, i think it's very interesting when you can pay to affect someone else's profile. I think it's QQ where you can pay to have a donkey shit on your friend's page and then they have to pay to clean it up. This prankster "gift" has a lot of value. It becomes a game within the system and it bonds two people together.

In a backchannel conversation, Fred argues with me that digital gifts will have little value because they only make people look good for a very brief period. They do not have the same type of persistence as identity-driven purchases like clothing in WoW. I think that it is precisely this ephemeralness that will make gifts popular. There are times for gift giving (predefined by society). Individuals' reaction to this is already visible on social network sites comments. People write happy birthday and send glitter for holidays (a.k.a. those animated graphical disasters screaming "happy valentine's day!"). These expressions are not simply altruistic kindness. By publicly performing the holiday or birthday, the individual doing the expression looks good before hir peers. It also prompts reciprocity so that one's own profile is then also filled with validating comments. Etc. Etc. (If interested in gifting, you absolutely must read the canon: Marcel Mauss' "The Gift".)

Like Fred, i too have an issue with the economic structure of Facebook Gifts, but it's not because i think that $1 is too expensive. Gifts are part of status play. As such, there are critical elements about gift giving that must be taken into consideration. For example, it's critical to know who gifted who first. You need to know this because it showcases consideration. Look closely at comments on MySpace and you'll see that timing matters; there's no timing on Facebook so you can't see who gifted who first and who reciprocated. Upon receipt of a gift, one is often required to reciprocate. To handle being second, people up the ante in reciprocating. The second person gives something that is worth more than the first. This requires having the ability to offer more; offering two of something isn't really the right answer - you want to offer something of more value. All of Facebook's gifts are $1 so they are all equal. Value, of course, doesn't have to be about money. Scarcity is quite valuable. If you gift something rare, it's far more desired than offering a cheesy gift that anyone could get. This is why the handmade gift matters in a culture where you can buy anything.

I don't think Facebook gifts - in its current incarnation - is sustainable. You can only gift so many kisses and rainbows before it's meaningless. And what's the point of paying $1 for them (other than to help the fight against breast cancer)? $1 is nothing if the gift is meaningful, but the 21 gift options will quickly lose meaning. It's not just about dropping the price down to 20 cents. It's about recognizing that gifting has variables that must be taken into account.

People want gifts. And they want to give gifts. Comments (or messages on the wall) are a form of gifting and every day, teens and 20-somethings log in hoping that someone left a loving comment. (And all the older folks cling to their Crackberries with the same hope.) It's very depressing to log in and get no love.

I think that Facebook is right-on for making a gifting-based offering, but i think that to make it work long-term, they need to understand gifting a bit better. It's about status. It's about scarcity. It's about reciprocity and upping the ante. These need to worked into the system and evolving this will make Facebook look good, not like they are backpeddling. This is not about gifting being a one-time rush; it's about understanding the social structure of gifting.

Category: yasns

Tags: facebook gift

   

Posted by zephoria at 6:27 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack (0)

January 7, 2007

PEW data on social network site use

PEW has just released the overview of their latest study on teens' usage of social network sites. Most of the data is not surprising, but it sure is interesting. Here are some of the key findings:

• 55% of online teens (ages 12-17) have created a personal profile online, and 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
• 66% of teens who have created a profile say that their profile is not visible to all internet users. They limit access to their profiles.
• 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often; 26% visit once a day, 22% visit several times a day.
• Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and created online profiles; 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with 54% of older boys, and 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only 57% of older boys have done so.

I wanted to comment on their findings because, frankly, i'm terrified of how this is going to be taken up by the press.

Only 55%?: Participants and Non-Participants

Given last year's hype, it may seem low that only 55% of teens have created a profile. It probably is, but not by a lot. That said, it's important to know something about PEW's methods. PEW calls families; they first speak with the parent and then talk to the teen. It is likely that the parents are nearby when their child is answering PEW's questions. Parents influence teens answers (as i've seen continuously) and in the case of MySpace, teens are more likely to say 'no' when the truth is yes than to say 'yes' when the truth is no. I've also been regularly surprised at how many teens tell me that they don't use these sites and then, when i poke at them, i find out that they do indeed have profiles (often created by friends) and that they login semi-regularly. Still, i suspect that PEW's numbers are low by 10% at most.

Qualitatively, I have found that there are two types of non-participants: disenfranchised teens and conscientious objectors. The former consists of those without Internet access, those whose parents succeed in banning them from participation, and online teens who primarily access the Internet through school and other public venues where social network sites are banned. Conscientious objectors include politically minded teens who wish to protest against Murdoch�s News Corp. (the corporate owner of MySpace), obedient teens who have respected or agree with their parents' moral or safety concerns, marginalized teens who feel that social network sites are for the cool kids, and other teens who feel as though they are too cool for these sites. The latter two explanations can be boiled down to one explanation that I heard frequently: "because it’s stupid." While the various conscientious objectors may deny participating, I have found that many of them actually do have profiles to which they log in occasionally. I have also found numerous cases where the friends of non-participants create profiles for them. Furthermore, amongst those conscientious objectors who are genuinely non-participants, I have yet to find one who does not have something to say about the sites, albeit typically something negative. In essence, MySpace is the civil society of teenage culture: whether one is for it or against it, everyone knows the site and has an opinion about it.

Gender differences

I am interested in the fact that in the 12-14 group, there's little difference in usage across the sexes (46% of boys vs. 44% of girls). Things change in the 15-17 group with 57% of boys and 70% of girls participating. That's significant. What happens? Most likely, this has to do with the fact that these sites are used to maintain current (and past) friends and girls are more engaged in this than boys. But either way, there's a shift in participation that appears to hapen along gender lines as teens get older.

Not surprisingly, boys are more than twice as likely to use these sites to flirt than girls (29% vs. 13%). Boys are also more likely to use these sites to make new friends than girls (60% vs. 46%). I have to say that this makes me really sad. This is probably not about boys being more interested in meeting people than girls, but about girls being the subject of most of our fear around strangers. I remember watching 1950s movies about fathers not letting their daughters out while their sons could do whatever. I suspect that we have similar gendered limitations on our children's internet usage. We allow our sons to talk with whoever, but tell our daughters that everyone they meet online is bound to be a perfecrt. Perhaps it's rational, perhaps girls are more at risk, but perhaps it is our fear of them that puts them more at risk.

Privacy and Public Expressions

I'm surprised that so many (66%) of teens have limit the visibility of their profile (translation: friends-only). I would not have expected it to be that high, but i think that's great. I know folks are going to say "that's low" because they think everyone should be hyperprivate, but that's not my view. I think that there's a reason to be out in public if you're careful about how you do it. I'm public, i've been public since i was a teenager and i don't regret it one bit.

There's a not-so-highlighted number in this report that i find very interesting though. 84% of teens have posted messages to a friend's profile or page. This practice, while not particularly surprising to people, may signal something very interesting. Teens are primarily writing "private" (realistically directed is a better word) messages to each other through this feature. In other words, "you, wazzup, we gonna go out tonite?" The response will also take place in the comments section and a conversation will happen back and forth across profiles. These are semi-private conversations written in public to be witnessed by all friends.

On one hand, you could say that this is ridiculous - why not keep private bits private? On the other hand, i think it's an interesting strategy in an environment where there's so much "she said / he said." By speaking in the witness of others, it's a lot harder to spread hearsay (or fabricated IM messages).

Social Networks vs. Social Networking

I would like to highlight the fact that 91% of teens are using social network sites to stay in touch with friends they see in person while only 49% are using them to meet people (ever). I hope that this makes people realize that, for teenagers, these sites are *not* about networking. They are about modeling one's social network.

Category: yasns

Tags: youth data research pew

   

Posted by zephoria at 1:00 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

December 5, 2006

Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites

My new paper on friending practices in social network sites is officially live at First Monday. Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites

"Are you my friend? Yes or no?" This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites. Participants must select who on the system they deem to be 'Friends.' Their choice is publicly displayed for all to see and becomes the backbone for networked participation. By examining what different participants groups do on social network sites, this paper investigates what Friendship means and how Friendship affects the culture of the sites. I will argue that Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally. In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame through which they can properly socialize with other participants. Friending is deeply affected by both social processes and technological affordances. I will argue that the established Friending norms evolved out of a need to resolve the social tensions that emerged due to technological limitations. At the same time, I will argue that Friending supports pre-existing social norms yet because the architecture of social network sites is fundamentally different than the architecture of unmediated social spaces, these sites introduce an environment that is quite unlike that with which we are accustomed.

I very much enjoyed writing this paper and i hope you enjoy reading it! Please feel free to share your thoughts here.

Category: yasns

Tags: friending socialnetworksites paper myspace friendster friends

   

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November 10, 2006

social network sites: my definition

I would like to offer my working definition of "social network sites" per confusion over my request for a timeline.

A "social network site" is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile.

To clarify:

1. Profile. A profile includes an identifiable handle (either the person's name or nick), information about that person (e.g. age, sex, location, interests, etc.). Most profiles also include a photograph and information about last login. Profiles have unique URLs that can be visited directly.
2. Traversable, publicly articulated social network. Participants have the ability to list other profiles as "friends" or "contacts" or some equivalent. This generates a social network graph which may be directed ("attention network" type of social network where friendship does not have to be confirmed) or undirected (where the other person must accept friendship). This articulated social network is displayed on an individual's profile for all other users to view. Each node contains a link to the profile of the other person so that individuals can traverse the network through friends of friends of friends....
3. Semi-persistent public comments. Participants can leave comments (or testimonials, guestbook messages, etc.) on others' profiles for everyone to see. These comments are semi-persistent in that they are not ephemeral but they may disappear over some period of time or upon removal. These comments are typically reverse-chronological in display. Because of these comments, profiles are a combination of an individuals' self-expression and what others say about that individual.

This definition includes all of the obvious sites that i talk about as social network sites: MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Cyworld, Mixi, Orkut, etc. Some of the obvious players like LinkedIn are barely social network sites because of their efforts to privatize the articulated social network but, given that it's possible, I count them (just like i count MySpace even when the users turn their profiles private).

There are sites that primarily fit into other categories but contain all of the features of social network sites. This is particularly common with sites that were once a different type of community site but have added new features. BlackPlanet, AsianAvenue, MiGente, QQ, and Xanga all fit into this bucket. I typically include LiveJournal as a social network site but it is sorta an edge-cases because they do not allow you to comment on people's profiles. They do however allow you to publicly comment on the blog entries. For this reason, Dodgeball is also a problem - there are no comments whatsoever. In many ways, i do not consider Dodgeball a social network site, but i do consider it a mobile social network tool which is why i often lump it into this cluster of things.

Of course, things are getting trickier every day. I'm half-inclined to qualify the definition to say that the profile and articulated social network are the centralizing feature of these sites because there are tons of sites that have profiles and social network site features as a peripheral components of their service but where the primary focus is elsewhere. Examples of this include: YouTube, Flickr, Last.FM, 43Things, Meetup, Vox, Crushspot, etc. (Dating sites are probably the most tricky because they are very profile-centric but the social network is peripheral.) But, on the other hand, most of these sites grew out of this phenomenon. So, for the sake of argument, i leave room to include them but also consider them edge cases.

At the same time, it's critical to point out what social network sites are most definitely NOT. They are NOT the same as all sites that support social networks or all sites that allow people to engage in social networking. Your mobile phone, your email, your instant message client... these all support the articulation of social networks (addressbooks) but they do not let you publicly display them in relation to a profile for others to traverse. MUDs/MOOs, BBSes, chatrooms, bulletin boards, mailing lists, MMORPGS... these all allow you to meet new people and make friends but they are not social network sites.

This is part of why i get really antsy when people talk about this category as "social networks" or "social networking" or "social networking sites." I think that this is leading to all sorts of confusion about what is and what is not in the category. These alternative categories are far far far too broad and all too often i hear people talking about everything that allows you to talk to anyone in any way as one of these sites (this is the mistake that DOPA makes for example).

While it's great to talk about all of these things as part of a broader "social software" or "social media" phenomenon, there are also good reasons to have a label to address a subset of these sites that are permitting very particular practices. This allows academics, politicians, technologists, educators, and others discuss how structural shifts are prompting different kinds of behaviors. (What happens when people publicly articulate their relationships? How do these systems change the rules of virality because the network is visible? Etc.) Because of this, i don't want the slippage to be too great because people are using terrible terms or because people want their site to fit into the category of what's currently cool.

Of course, like most categories, there are huge issues around the edges and there's never a clean way to construct boundaries. (To understand the challenges, read Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.) Just think of the category "game" and try to come up with a comfortable definition and boundary for that. Still, there are things that are most definitely not games. An apple is not a game. Sure, it can be used in a game but it is not inherently a game. Not all sites that allow people to engage in social activity are social network sites and it is ridiculous to try to shove them all there simply because there's a lot of marketing money to be made (yet i realize that this is often the reason why people do try). For this reason, i really want to stake out "social network sites" as a category that has meaningful properties even if the edges are a little fuzzy. There is still meaningful family resemblance and more central prototypes than others. I really want to focus on making sense of what's happening with this category by focusing primarily on the prototypes and less on the edge cases.

Anyhow, this is a work in progress but i wanted to write some of this down since i seem to be getting into lots of fights via email about this.

Category: yasns

Tags: definition myspace facebook friendster socialnetworksite

   

Posted by zephoria at 3:30 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack (0)

November 8, 2006

social network site history

When i started tracking social network sites, i didn't think that i would be studying them. I did a *terrible* job at keeping a timeline and now, i realize, this is important information to have on hand. I'm currently in the process of trying to go backwards and capture critical dates and i need your help. I know a lot of you have a lot of this information and can probably help me (and thus help everyone else interested in this arena).

I have created a simple pbwiki at http://yasns.pbwiki.com/ (password yasns) where i'm starting to make a timeline. Can you please add what you know to it? Pretty please with a cherry on top? A lot of this information is scattered all over the web and in people's heads and it'd be great to get it documented in a centralized source. (I know that there is some info on Wikipedia but it's not complete; as appropriate, i will transfer information back in their format.) Note: i didn't include citations because i often don't have them but if you have them, they'd be very very welcome.

Please let others know about this if you think they might have information to add. Thank you kindly for your time.

(PS: i have a new academic paper coming out shortly. Stay tuned.)

Category: yasns

Tags: friendster myspace facebook socialnetworksites

   

Posted by zephoria at 5:08 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

September 28, 2006

Facebook is open

Facebook is open. I've already received friend requests from companies selling their wares by creating a Profile. I am also faced with more contexts that i can deal with. (Note: i'm not accepting friendships from folks that i know in the blogosphere until i figure out how to mix this with my role as an academic and TA. I am also not inviting folks so please don't ask.)

Anyhow, i owe this issue a long analysis but i'm too tired right now to do anything but say le sigh. *Major* le sigh. I do not believe that social network sites are able to sustain lots of conflicting social contexts. Or, rather, i don't believe that they can continue as a hang-out space. I know that Facebook will continue to grow but i believe that the core value of it will be lost for the sake of growth. MySpace is already struggling to cope with what happens when teens and parents/authorities are in the same place. At least most professors have had the curtesy to keep distance. Unfortunately, this opening will not simply allow college students without .edus and high schools students to join. It will also open the doors for every adult who is obsessed with youth - parents, authorities, pedophiles, commercial enterprises...

Le sigh.

(tx Liz for the image)

Category: yasns

Tags: facebook

   

Posted by zephoria at 8:20 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

September 18, 2006

The Term "Social Network(ing) Sites"

Early in my research of Friendster, there was a great deal of discussion by sociologists about the name of these sites. Originally, the press was using the term "social networks" to describe them; this outraged the sociologists who ranted on and on about how these were not actually social networks. Since MySpace exploded, the media has chosen a new term "social networking sites." Needless to say, this didn't fare any better in the eyes of sociologists and i got critiqued at a social network conference for using this term. Likewise, on the mailing lists, there has been plenty of grumbling. Although i'm usually the first to defend whatever the mainstream term is, i have to agree with the sociologist's critique.

"Social networks" are the network of relationships between individuals in society. Social scientists of all stripes study the social networks of people (and corporations, nation-states, animals, etc.). "Social networking" is a term that makes most social scientists cringe. As a verb, it is meant to signal the active process of seeking to build one's social network. Not surprisingly, every business school goes out of its way to teach social networking to their students based on some hypotheses about how different relationship structures will help people at work. This active schmoozing makes my skin crawl because there's nothing genuine about it.

By employing the term "social networking sites," the media is doing a disservice to most people who participate on these sites. The connotation, especially to non-participants, is that people are running around these sites meeting strangers (... who are predators). EEK! We don't want to think of our teens as networking with unknowns. (Moral panic ensues.) The verb form gives off a problematic impression and it obfuscates what people actually do on these sites. Most folks hang out with their friends. They go there to model their social network, not to engaging in social networking. (LinkedIn and other professional sites are different.)

While parents, authorities, and the media are using the term "social networking site," it's not what i'm hearing from teens. They don't talk about the sites as a collection - they talk about MySpace and/or Facebook. The exception is when they reference the moral panic or parental concern. For example, "My parents don't think that social networking sites are safe." When they are talking about what they do, where they go, they use the brand names. Given that teens are not using the term except in reference to their parents, i'm going to stick with "social network sites" in an attempt to properly convey what is actually going on. I encourage others to do the same.

I realize that it's too late to re-frame this term in public discourse but i also think that the issue needs to be highlighted. All too often we forget how our terms stem from and magnify our fears, subtly and unconsciously. Our terms carry politics with them.

Category: yasns

Tags: terminology framing

   

Posted by zephoria at 3:15 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack (0)

September 8, 2006

Facebook's "Privacy Trainwreck": Exposure, Invasion, and Drama

Last night, i asked will Facebook learn from its mistake? In the first paragraph, i alluded to a "privacy trainwreck" and then went on to briefly highlight the political actions that were taking place. I never returned to why i labeled it that way and in my coarseness, i failed to properly convey what i meant by this.

When i sat down to explain the significance of the "privacy trainwreck," a full-length essay came out. Rather than make you read this essay in blog form (or via your RSS reader), i partitioned it off to a printable webpage.

Facebook's "Privacy Trainwreck": Exposure, Invasion, and Drama

The key points that i make in this essay are:

• Privacy is an experience that people have, not a state of data.
• The ickyness that people feel when they panic about privacy comes from the experience of exposure or invasion.
• We've experienced the exposure hiccup before with Cobot. When are we going to learn?
• Invasion changes social reality and there is a cognitive cap to being able to handle it.
• Does invasion potentially result in a weakening of meaningful social ties?
• Facebook lost its innocence this week.

Please enjoy this essay and forward it on to both technology folks and Facebook participants. I would like to hear feedback!

Category: yasns

Tags: facebook privacy

   

Posted by zephoria at 8:43 PM | Comments (48) | TrackBack (0)

September 7, 2006

will facebook learn from its mistake?

As Fred Stutzman noted, Facebook Broke Its Culture this week. In an attempt to provide something that would make people's lives easier, they created a privacy trainwreck. Earlier this week, they unleashed a feature that notified all of your "friends" of EVERY update that you make. Live. Feed style. Users panicked! Sure, anyone could've written a script to do that. Sure, it's data that's already there. But not in aggregate. The problem is that sometimes people don't want information to be easier to access.

Not all "friends" are friends. Sometimes, you say yes to save face but you count on those people not actually being stalkers. They don't really watch your page with any focus so most of what you put up goes by unnoticed. But not if all of your "friends" are notified of your every move.

As the chaos mounted, people started protesting. Nearly 700,000 joined a "Students Against Facebook News Feed" group. Others discussed boycotting the service or deleting their accounts.

Apparently, Facebook is paying attention to this uproar. It doesn't sound like they're going to revert the feature but, instead, let people opt out. Yet, at the same time, they think that people will get used to it. And they are telling their users why they should like it. (Gosh i hate when people try to configure their users.)

This situation is quite interesting. People are taking to the (virtual) streets to object to what the architects are doing their (virtual) city. They don't like the changes in the architecture and they want their voices heard. And it also looks like virtual protesters can raise a far greater ruckus than the ones in meatspace.

While digital communities are fantastic, one of the issues is that people don't actually own the turf in which they're creating cultural artifacts. When earthquakes rattle digital streets, it's not Mother Nature at work. It's the work of a Corporation. We all like to think that these corporations have the best of intentions and we rely on them to serve the people. Yet, as Sasha is always reminding me, they are not elected officials, this is not a democracy, it's a benevolent dictatorship. We count on the creators to be benevolent but they can make an earthquake whenever they want and we still have to clean up the pieces.

I wonder what this protest cost Facebook. I also wonder if they will learn from this. (I still have immense respect for Six Apart from the time when they pissed off their users and apologized and changed.) But more than anything, i wonder when companies will start thinking of their users as constituents and think about engaging them before executing major changes to the foundation of their social interaction. Of course, i recognize it's a tradeoff. Companies don't want to leak what they're doing pre-launch but if they change things radically, they piss off their core members. And the core members disengage emotionally because they don't feel as though they're a part of the system. Yet, in my opinion, to use Kathy Sierra's phrase creating passionate users is *everything*. And that means engaging them rather than being as dramatic as Mother Nature.

Update: I decided to respond to myself. Facebook's "Privacy Trainwreck": Exposure, Invasion, and Drama

Category: yasns

Tags: facebook configuringusers

   

Posted by zephoria at 7:20 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack (0)

August 19, 2006

Research on Social Network Sites

UPDATE: This page is out-of-date. An updated list can be found here:

Research on Social Network Sites

Thank you!

I want to track down everyone who is actively doing research on social network sites. (Clarification: i'm looking for folks that are publishing in peer-reviewed spaces, not just researching for their company or blog.) Nicole Ellison and i are plotting to bring ways to bring everyone together. I'm also looking to create a list of all known publications. I know there's more than what i'm listing so i need your help. Please!

Publications and Presentations

• Acquisti, Alessandro and Ralph Gross. 2006. "Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook." Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Cambridge: June 28-30.
• Adamic, Lada, Orkut Buyukkokten, and Eytan Adar. 2003. "A social network caught in the Web." First Monday.
• Backstrom, L., Huttenlocher, D., Kleinberg, J., & Lan, X. (2006). Group Formation in Large Social Networks: Membership, Growth, and Evolution. Paper presented at the KDD '06, Philadelphia, PA.
• Barnes, Susan. 2006. A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States. First Monday.
• boyd, danah. (in press) "Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life." MacArthur Foundation on Digital Learning, Identity Volume (ed. David Buckingham).
• boyd, danah. (in press) "None of this is Real." Structures of Participation (ed. Joe Karaganis).
• boyd, danah. 2006. "Friends, Friendsters, and MySpace Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites." First Monday. 11(12), December.
• boyd, danah. 2006. "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace." Talk as AAAS 2006 (part of panel: "It's 10PM: Do You Know Where Your Children Are ... Online!"). St. Louis, Missouri: February 19.
• boyd, danah and Jeffrey Heer. 2006. "Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster." Proceedings of the Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-39) , Persistent Conversation Track. Kauai, HI: IEEE Computer Society. January 4 - 7.
• boyd, danah. 2004. "Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks." Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 24-29.
• Byrne, Dara. 2007. "The Future of (the) 'Race': Identity, Discourse and the Rise of Computer-mediated Public Spheres." In MacArthur Foundation Book Series and Everett, A. (Eds.), Race and ethnicity volume.
• Donath, Judith and danah boyd. 2004. "Public displays of connection." BT Technology Journal Vol 22, No 4. October, pp 71-82.
• Dwyer, Cathy. 2007. Digital Relationships in the 'MySpace' Generation: Results From a Qualitative Study HICSS 2007.
• Ellison, Nicole, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe. 2006. "The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites." JCMC 12(4).
• Fono, D., & Raynes-Goldie, K. (in press) Hyperfriends and Beyond: Friendship and Social Norms on LiveJournal. (In press). To appear in M. Consalvo & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), Internet Research Annual Volume 4: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conference. New York: Peter Lang.
• Gajjala, Radhika. (in-progress) "Production of Raced and Classed Selves as (Stereotypical) Interface: Social Networks at the Intersection of Online/Offline, Global/Local." Cultural Studies Reader - edited by Michael Ryan.
• Geidner, Nicholas, Christopher Flook and Mark Bell. (in review) "Male Self-Identification on Facebook.com." Communication Quarterly.
• Golder, Scott, Dennis Wilkinson, and Bernardo Huberman. Rhythms of Social Interaction: Messaging within a Massive Online Network.
• Gross, Ralph and Alessandro Acquisti. 2005. "Information Reveleation and Privacy in Online Social Networks." ACM WPES Workshop.
• Heer, Jeffrey and danah boyd. 2005. "Vizster: Visualizing Online Social Networks." IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis 2005). Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 23-25.
• Hewitt, Anne and Andrea Forte. 2006. "Crossing Boundaries: Identity Management and Student/Faculty Relationships on the Facebook." Poster/Extended Abstract, CSCW 2006.
• Kapoor, N., Konstan, J., & Terveen, L. (2005). How Peer Photos Influence Member Participation in Online Communities. Paper presented at the CHI 2005.
• Liu, Hugo, Pattie Maes, Glorianna Davenport. 2006. "Unraveling the taste fabric of social networks." International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems 2(1), 42-71, Hershey, PA: Idea Academic Publishers.
• Marwick, Alice. 2005. "'I'm a Lot More Interesting than a Friendster Profile': Identity Presentation, Authenticity and Power in Social Networking Services." Association of Online Internet Researchers. Chicago.
• Perkel, Dan. 2006. "Copy and Paste Literacy: Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile." Informal Learning and Digital Media. Odense Denmark: September 21-23.
• Preibusch, S., Hoser, B., Gürses, S., & Berendt, B. (2007). Ubiquitous social networks ? opportunities and challenges for privacy-aware user modelling. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Data Mining for User Modelling at UM 2007, Corfu, Greece, June 2007.
• Recuero, Raquel. 2005. "Um estudo do capital social gerado a partir das Redes Sociais no Orkut e nos Weblogs." Trabalho apresentado no GT de Tecnologias da Comunicacao e da Informacao da COMPOS 2005, em Niteroi/RJ. (in Portuguese)
• Spertus, Ellen, Mehran Sahami and Orkut Buyukkokten. 2005. "Evaluating similarity measures: a large-scale study in the orkut social network." Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data.
• Stutzman, Frederic. 2006. "An Evaluation of Identity-Sharing Behavior in Social Network Communities." iDMa Journal.

Category: yasns

Tags: research

   

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May 11, 2006

AIM pages

Has anyone been able to use AIM Pages? It doesn't work on Safari and it keeps crashing Firefox with all sorts of bizerko errors. I can't figure out how to add a photo on it and i keep crashing it. I'd love to hear someone else's feedback who has been able to make it work. Is it fun to play with? What all can you put up there? Does it look cool? (And what's up with the 16+ thing? That should be very interesting... i wonder how many teens will lie...)

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October 28, 2005

Facebook and MySpace used as site of mourning/memory

Yesterday, Christine Dao (a junior at Berkeley) died in a fatal car crash. As an act of mourning, her friends wrote her dozens of comments on her Facebook Profile and MySpace Profile. These Profiles serves both as a site of mourning and a site of memory, showing Christine's life and the love of her friends.

Christine your vigil tonite was beautiful; it's amazing to see how many lives you touched. I'm still reeling from it all...we miss you. -- Scott

Hey Chrisitne...you alway had a energetic personality, always smiling...you were one of the few that were always there for me....im going to misss you sooo much!!! rest in peace.. -- Jeff

Hey Beautiful!!! I can't imagine what happened but only to know that no matter what you will never be forgotten. The memories we've shared would only be cherished and we will always miss you my kid...Rest In Peace...see you when I get there.... -- Pao

There is no good way to mourn the loss of someone young, but what fascinates me about these messages on Christine's Profiles is that they are all written to her but visible for everyone to see. A persistent, public signal of mourning. Her friends are speaking _to_ her, not about her.

Her actual Profile is unchanged even though it looks so alive. Her photos show her in action and her interests include statements like "love going to Cal Football games. laughing. finding cool people who i can laugh with. cracking jokes. getting jokes cracked on me. music-ing. rsf-ing (need a work out plan like Kanye West). taking long walks. my hoes. having FUN!"

What does it mean to write persistent comments for the dead? Is it a sign of respect, of public remembrance? I hope so. Rest in peace Christine.

Category: yasns

Tags: mourning facebook myspace

   

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September 27, 2005

porn distribution on Friendster and MySpace

When Paul posted about odd messages from girls on Friendster and MySpace, i couldn't help but break out in giggles.

In most free hetero online dating sites, the vast majority of girls are fake. They write men (which gets them all excited because few women write to men). Guys write back, curious to learn more. And when the girl writes back, she tells you about how you can visit her site to learn more. Of course, the site is a porn site where you have to pay to enter. This works well because a fraction of the men ::shrug:: and figure it could be hot and another chunk think that they are conversing with a porn star, which would be super hott.

When companies take down these hott girl profiles, it disrupts the whole economy. "Real" girls don't want to participate because the caliber of women just went down and most women want to be connected to other hot women. Men leave because the quality was diminished. And down the spiral we go.

Well, it seems like fake profiles have taken on a new form on Friendster and MySpace. Sure enough, in writing back, Paul got a link to photos. Hot girls, happy to sell you their porn. Yay! (But why aren't they contacting me???) So how bad will it get? (And does the same thing operate in gay male culture?)

Category: yasns

   

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September 24, 2005

YASNS by any other name

I was talking to a friend and somehow social networking services came up and she said her boyfriend referred to them all as "my live tribester space." I like that sooo much more than YASNS. ::giggle::

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July 23, 2005

social networks and drug networks

Rule #1 for studying social culture: pay attention to the sex and drugs.

When it was reported that Orkut is being used as a drug networking tool in Brazil, my immediate response was duh.

I have interviewed subjects who distributed cocaine in Baltimore via Friendster. (To my knowledge, they were never caught which makes it different than the situation with Orkut.) Other subjects have told me ways to find drugs on Tribe.net and MySpace. Obviously, i am not willing to disclose how or who. But this is definitely not unique to Orkut nor to social networking in general. For example, in college, people used to buy drugs on eBay.

Give people the ability to distribute information and they will distribute drugs. Tis just as obvious as if you give people access to attractive people, they will date. So, i find it very entertaining that people get up in arms about this.

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March 24, 2005

initial impression of Yahoo 360

Today, Yahoo invited a handful of "influencers" to have early access to their new product 360 degrees. Apparently, i'm one of them so i got to sit around a table at Yahoo, learn about the product and speak my mind. I have to say that i'm impressed that Yahoo folks wanted to hear all of our crankiness head-on rather than waiting for it to appear in our random ramblings online. Even better: they didn't make us sign any NDAs so we can blog all we want. I lurve that.

So, the tool comes out in like a week. I don't know how final the version that we saw today is, but i thought i'd offer some impressions based on what i saw since i know folks out there are curious.

360 will be invite-only but they are not seeding through employees, rather, they are seeding through active Yahoo users. This is actually very important because frankly, 360 isn't meant for people like me (or like you). It's meant for your average not-technically inclined individual who is scared of blogging but wants to share their thoughts, photos, and recommendations with their friends. Thus, before we all get into a blogizzy, it's important to remember the target.

The feature set that i saw included integrated YIM, a blogging tool, a recommendations engine (linked to local), photos (linked to Y photos, not Flickr) and a social network. It's all very integrated and emphasizes Yahoo products (although they were talking about connecting it with other products and they are doing some RSS stuff). Throughout all of this are heavy controls for privacy/publication, although it is all strict categorization schemes where you can make things available to groups (think: LJ).

Of course, it has all of the social problems of bi-directional, articulated social networks (nothing solved there). And the controls are really overwhelming. In fact, a lot of the product is overwhelming for the not-technically-savvy and i think that this will be their major problem unless they figure out how to slowly expose things (one of our strongest recommendations). For the techgeek, it will feel like they didn't go far enough, didn't have enough features, etc. That's actually a lot easier to solve than the overwhelming problem and i expect they'll build new features soon so i think that the techgeeks should wait. But i'm really worried about the novice user because it has many of the problems of blogging, privacy and social networks rolled into one big problem. Plus, you really need to be heavily integrated into the Yahoo network for it to really make sense.

Frankly, i think that they should take the word "blog" out of the picture entirely. While the service allows you to share your materials with layered groups of friends, the term 'blog' is intimidating to the mainstream who see it as publishing or otherwise uber-public. Since Yahoo isn't requiring uber-public, i think that they should get rid of the term. We'll see what happens.

I also think that it makes much much more sense connected with photosharing and i really wish that they would wait on this product until Flickr is connected with them - there's going to be so much overlap and confusion :( Plus, while there are huge problems with Flickr's system of privacy management, there's a lot that they have going for them interface wise. For example, you don't have to click stupid edit buttons - you can edit while consuming. This is soooo cool. I wish more folks would have fun with javascript.

Anyhow, my general impression is that i'm wary, but i don't think that this is for me and i think it will be nice for the heavily integrated Yahoo user.

Category: yasns

   

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July 24, 2004

SNS and impersonation, deception, kidnapping

A message is going around Orkut that a woman in Brasil was kidnapped and that the details available through her Orkut profile helped the kidnappers. [See Jeff's descript.]

Yesterday, when speaking with a friend, he asked me if i thought that identity theft would be made easier via SNS tools.

At this point, i hope that most people realize that the term "six degrees of separation" is not a referent to Milgram, but to a play. I think that folks forget what the premise of that play is. A young man comes to a family's home, professing to be a friend of their son's. He enchants them by knowing so much about their son that they trust him completely, even though it's all researched.

Deception and impersonation are nothing new to social networks; it just went digital.

Category: yasns

   

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April 20, 2004

Linked Out: blogging, equality and the future

Linked Out: blogging, equality and the future is an article in Mindjack that addresses some of the issues around blogging: When did it become a phenomenon? (Blood's Law of Weblog History) Is it an equalizer? (danah and Clay disagree; Joi gets hopeful)

Fun overview of some of the current discussions that i've been having, even it makes me cringe to be called an A-list blogger.

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March 30, 2004

Jonathan Abrams to be replaced at Friendster?

According to David Galbraith's blog, Jonathan Abrams is going to be replaced by Tim Koogle (former CEO of Yahoo). If this is true, this will be *fascinating* absolutely *fascinating.*

I'd love to see what a new CEO could do. ::bounce::

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March 29, 2004

"Orkut thinks danah is a school bus."

This is Clay's conclusion about Orkut at the MSR Symposium. ::BLUSH:: (More later...)

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March 22, 2004

thinking through a linked in request

First, i admit: i don't get the business world. Thus, the social norms there are very lost on me. Recently i was faced with a Linked In request that brought this issue to the forefront.

I'm linked to two people that i barely know because of social politeness - Person B & D. Person B had a "friend" (A) that wanted to get person E ("friend" of D's) to do something for him. I've never heard of A or E and only have vague name/product recognition of B&D. Person B passes me this note from A with an attached note saying that he doesn't know him but it sounds reasonable.

So, as i saw it, i could have:
1) Passed it on, acknowledging that i barely know B to the barely known D and let it be his problem
2) Stopped it, saying that i don't feel comfortable passing this on not knowing any of the parties
3) Pretended like i'm a ostrich and make it go away by sticking my head in the ground, fingers in ears, eyes closed screaming "i don't see you"

Now, if you know me, you know that i chose 3. I *HATE* being stuck in the middle of socially awkward situations. All this made me wanna do is run very far away from Linked In. This in turn made me feel supremely guilty because i want Linked In to work for people.

The thing about helping people out in this context is that it's supposed to make you feel empowered, like you did a good deed. But when you're stuck in the middle of a chain of unknowns, you're faced with the explicit feeling that your reputation is being forced through the ringer for people you don't know. There are a lot of *friends* that i won't vouch for on a professional level... why should i vouch for people that i don't know?

I realized that the only way that i'm willing to help out a friend-of-a-friend is when i really care for the well-being of my friend and trust their relationship with that person. And that takes a lot more than a recognizable professional relationship. So, i had a little idea...

Orkut relieves my guilt by letting me mark that i don't know a person who has be-friended me. I don't have to say no - i can simply say i don't know this person. They don't know it and i don't have to feel guilty. Although Orkut's only purpose of this is guilt reduction, Linked In could actually use this approach to their advantage.

For example, why can't i list all of the people that i know and rather than say how important they are to me, say what kind of requests i'm willing to receive from that end. For example:
1) Willing to take any requests that come down the chain from this person, no matter how many links
2) Willing to take requests from this person and their friends (or perhaps willing to take requests only from the friends who are of this level of value to them...)
3) Willing to take requests from this person only
4) Not willing to receive requests from this person no matter what (a.k.a. supreme guilt reduction based on having to accept them as a friend)

Of course, this would really screw with the graphs and who one could see. But i wonder if it would help people like me who want to run away because of the discomfort.

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Posted by zephoria at 12:07 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

social networks for collegiate heritage admissions + affirmative action

I remember sitting in a dorm at Brown listening to people complain about why rich kids seemed to get into Ivy League schools regardless of their intelligence, scores or any other metric with which we were familiar judged; the complaint centered around heritage admissions and famous people's kids. One of my friends reminded the group that it was clearly a valuable element and should be promoted not critiqued.

If you look at many well-known American universities, the primary value for undergraduates concerns the social network. Frankly, internationally renowned researchers can't teach. But you don't pay $30K a year to get the best *formal* education. You pay $30K a year to get tapped into a collection of like-minded driven people who will be a key aspect of your social network for life. The late-night dorm session conversations are so much more informative than the lecture halls. But the connections you make from shared alumni extend widely.

If you assume that the social network is the most valuable asset, it is clearly important to have as diverse a population as possible. You want to introduce the poor brilliant students to the rich ones because they will have a better chance. One of the most obvious impacts of higher education is that you jump socio-economic class. While i didn't grow up as such, i recognize that i'm now a part of the privileged class. It is not due to my income (which is non-existent), but due to my potential and connections. Those connections are intimately tied into the network that i built as an undergraduate. Basically, college brings together people from diverse backgrounds and with unique access to knowledge or connections. This is then utilized to help groups of students branch out. College is the ideal time to meet new people who can/will introduce you to a wide variety of things.

Thus, from an admissions perspective, it is desirable to bring in rich kids who will not only help offset the costs for poor kids, but help introduce them to a network of possibility. This is why Harvard and Princeton's decision to give all grants to the poorest students is a great idea. One of the biggest class dividers on a campus like that is who works in food service and who doesn't because they don't need to. By letting the groups mingle and not trying to reinforce class in these environments, there's a great potential for connecting diverse people.

[I'd love to hear a critique of this perspective.]

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March 19, 2004

Friendster usability analysis

Wow. This is quite old, but it is *fantastic*. Apparently, a whole class at MIT analyzed for their midterm and were asked to "... identify three usability problems with Friendster and write instructions to their programmers on how to fix them." Needless to say, they have a lot of thoughts on the matter.

How fascinating is it that people all over the world, in classes and personally, are putting thought into solving Friendster's problems?

[Thanks Jason]

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March 16, 2004

::cringe:: Jonathan Abrams did not invent social networks

I really wanted to like Jonathan Abrams' talk at SXSW. I was trying to put down my frustrations and listen. But he broke me. Not with the anecdotes, but the horrible misunderstanding of social networks.

He started off the talk saying that he wanted to clarify what people meant by social networks. Midway through, he spoke about how his friend from Ryze was creating a tool for professional networking. He thought that this was great but that it would be cool to make this available for social life too. Thus, he made up the term social networking to discuss what he was doing. And he finds it really strange that everyone else is using that term to talk about their sites and even ::gasp:: offline behavior.

He disregards all predecessors (other than Ryze) because they didn't influence him. He disregards academics, points out that his site is the only one who made it a reality, etc. Erg. I can't even reiterate all of the things that i disagreed with.

There were a few interesting anecdotes. But more than anything, i successfully remembered why i'm a much bigger fan of the people who breathed life into Friendster than i am its creator.

[Btw: does anyone have that talk on tape? There are way too many perfect quotes for my essay on configuring the users.]

Update:
David Weinberger has a few notes on the talk and on his strange interactions.

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March 5, 2004

*HYSTERICAL* - the orkut world song

I'm 100% ROFL. A friend sent me the "Orkut World" song. This is absolutely hysterical, ending with "hello? everybody? hello???? oh crap... i'm in jail." A must listen.

(via Cory via FilePile via Kevin via Mighty Mighty Spatchtones)

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February 26, 2004

rebecca blood on saving orkut

I really like Rebecca Blood's article on 13 ways to save Orkut.

Category: yasns

   

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Which YASNS is best?

Over and over again, people tell me that one of the YASNS is *far* better than any of the other ones. Usually, they want me to agree with them. Sometimes, people just ask me which one i think is best.

Given that this is me, i have a problem with this question. My problem is not personal or political... it's contextual. In this case, "best" is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, i often ask people what *they* want in a YASNS. Almost always, there's one overwhelming factor that makes one YASNS better than another for the individual: "people like me."

In a post-finals hallucinatory state, i decided to attend a gathering with some of my peers last December. A group gathered into a "panel" to talk about social software. One very smart, very respected VC spoke about how she believed that LinkedIn was hands down the best YASNS. I found myself speaking... or more accurately exploding because of her conception. It's not that i don't believe that LinkedIn was the best for her - i truly do. It's that i don't believe that there is a universal best.

When i was interviewing early Friendster adopters about the site, over and over again, they told me that they loved it because it was a site fool of cool hipsters like them. They identified with the people on the site and they loved feeling like everywhere they turned, they saw other people that they thought were cool. They were not looking forward to it being mainstream because then there will be duds on the system. Each sub-hipster group was likely to run across more people like them depending on their linking structure. (Homophily again.) Because most people joined under one context, they never saw the other "non-hipsters" that they dealt with in everyday life. When that started happening, they were disappointed.

When Orkut exploded, all of the social software fiends jumped on the train like it was going to Disney World. It was the end-all be-all of the YASNS. Of course it was... to them... It was filled with people like them - their colleagues, those that they respect, etc. It felt like home.

Guess what? At Tribe.net, there are lots of people who feel at home and spend exorbitant hours on the service. Same with MySpace. Same with Everyone's Connected. Same with Live Journal.

The battle is not simply about the best tools. In fact, that's a truly secondary issue. It's about motivating a coherent group to join, participate and make it home. What makes the best pub? Is it really the beer or the price? Hell, the only reason that the music usually matters is because it draws people that you like to the pub. It's the combination of environment and people.. but the environment brings the people so the environment DOES matter.

There's an architectural lesson there... Environment matters because it draws the right people. This is why niche shit works. The biggest joke about the Internet is that the most profitable services are barely public. They address a niche market completely. One of the most unfortunate things about social software is that everyone is trying to court everyone to their service. Frankly, a far more appropriate response would be to try to figure out which users are most suited for your tool given its current state and then try to meet their needs completely. Figure out your audience. And don't simply focus on your desired audience because the tool you created may not have met their needs... be able to shift if you find that you've built something far more appropriate for another group. Cause frankly? If you have, the users know it and are using it more completely there.

[Note: Friendster's popularity in Asia isn't because it's a good tool; it's because the way the site was structured met that population's needs/desires without much translation. It was inadvertently and accidentally best for them, not well designed for them.]

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hoax Orkut article

On various mailing lists, people were up in arms by this article: Popular social website revealed as college experiment. It argues that Orkut is a class project to collect data and that is why the ToS is so fubared. I was a bit skeptical by the emails, so i was glad to find out that it is truly a hoax. Sorry for ruining it for people. But it really is funny.

Continue reading "hoax Orkut article"

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February 24, 2004

Orkut stats

I noticed that Orkut put statistics up. The demographics are fascinating and i'm intrigued to see that 37% of the population is under 25. This means that Orkut has gone into new domains. Mmmm.. yummy.

Of course, i'm less than thrilled to see the member stats. They have it broken down into connectors, celebrities and stars. I wonder how much this motivates different people to connect more, put up sexier pictures, pressure friends to indicate each other as fans, etc. ::sigh::

Category: yasns

   

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February 17, 2004

geography of Orkut profiles: visualization

Dunno where this came from, but it's a fun visualization of Orkut members in the NY region based on long/lat. It seems as though folks are already scraping Orkut....

Category: yasns

   

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February 9, 2004

funny anti-YASNS gifts

Hacking Friendster, Part I is a set of code necessary impact the insecurities in Friendster.

Get Out of Orkut Free is the key to avoiding Orkut. [There's a Get Out of Orkut JAIL Free one floating out there too]

Category: yasns

   

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February 1, 2004

irritated by my own Orkut profile

This morning, i voiced my belief that it is my responsibility to be respectful to the creators of social software by trying to follow their intentions. Marc Canter dropped me a note this morning that truly upset me: "with 135 friends - you've now made it to the elite top 9. Congrats." Marc's right: this is truly disturbing, apparently hypocritical and not something that i'm thrilled to realize at all.

When i joined Orkut, i made the decision to accept all friendship requests from people that i have spoken with, have actively read, or have an otherwise loose connection. I decided that i would never invite anyone who i don't consider a friend or colleague, nor ask to friend anyone based on the same metric. Although i would accept friend connections from people that i recognized, i figured that this policy would limit the number of people that i linked to. This has not happened. And now, i'm faced with a profile that makes me look like i'm trying to win some popularity contest. Yuck. Very yuck.

This is precisely why i'm beyond irritated at these things. I am not in a totally social awkward position, wanting to be hidden amidst the crowd, but sticking out like a sore thumb. Yet, how does one proceed properly? Do i start deleting "friends" who i don't know that well? Where does one insert a black line into a gray continuum? In many ways, Friendster was much more organic for me. I joined with my friend group, connected to people who i intimately knew and was rarely faced with the situation of having to turn away colleagues or people i know from the digital only. I didn't ask them; they didn't ask me.

So, this makes me think... what is it about Orkut that has made this an incredibly uncomfortable situation? Is it because we're a year into YASNS? Is it because we're tired of regulating boundaries? Is it because the site further promotes popularity? What is it?

Personally, i have a partial guess. I think that because the site advertises people's popularity at every stage, people are far more likely to connect to the popular people that they recognize because they're right out there, in front. (Ah, yes, power laws.) Thus, i'm guessing that by inviting a stack of my friends and showing up high early on, later adopters who normally wouldn't have searched for me saw me and added me, even though i'm not one of their closer friends, but simply a partner in the social discussion space. Perhaps this feature is quite a cultural flaw?

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 4:53 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack (6)

correcting Marc Canter's perception of my views

I was a bit miffed to read Marc Canter's perception of my views:

danah thinks we should treat these relationships more seriously.  Or somehow believe that by calling someone a 'friend' in an explicit social networking environment - actually means something.

I am not interested in what users SHOULD do; i'm interested in what they do do. That said, i truly believe that early users help construct the social norms for any given environment. In "Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do," Scott Feld talks about how people's understanding of how may friends they should have is constructed by their friends.

Marc - i don't believe that users should take these relationships more seriously; i believe that YOU should. Users will do whatever they damn well please, and i think that we should learn from them. But out of respect to the creators of these systems, many of whom are our friends, i truly believe that we should respect their goals and not engage in behavior that disrespects their intentions. Furthermore, i believe that we should never be the exceptions on any given service, the ones who push the boundaries. We are not average users. We should sit back and watch what average users do, not try to top them. By engaging in disrespectful behavior, we make it much harder for our friends and colleagues to execute their business plans as they're busy policing us.

This is about ethics and respect, not about any false notion that these networks actually mean something. This is about business models, strategy, and scalability, not research.

[Lago: i definitely realize that it's a game; i'm sorry that you thought otherwise.]

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 2:48 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack (2)

January 31, 2004

why Orkut makes people insecure

I was talking to a friend about my Orkut rant. Orkut really bothered him and he was trying to tease out why. He knew that it bothered him more than Friendster and it wasn't simply because it was Google. In fact, he really likes Google.

As far as he could tease out, it bothered him mostly because the YASNS phenomenon has been around for a year at this point. Many of the weaknesses have been publicly discussed, particularly around Friendster. "Google had the opportunity to learn from Friendster and the other YASNSes, solving their known issues, but instead they released a tool that was broken in exactly the same way as its ancestors. This doesn't advance the art, it doesn't provide new value to users, and, because of Google's popularity and credibility, it foists the YASNS problems (like the Economy of Bullshit and the social awkwardnesses) on an even larger user-base. Friendster had the excuse that they were breaking new ground and discovering new problems. What's Google's excuse?"

Of course, he's not the only one uncertain about Orkut. Chris articulates his insecurity based on his feelings of being disrespected..

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 6:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)

banned from Orkut?

I keep hearing about folks who have been kicked off or "jailed" from Orkut. I'd love to hear more about this. Who all is getting banned? Why? Are you given explanations? What happens when you try to fight?

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 5:02 PM | Comments (33) | TrackBack (11)

January 30, 2004

orkut pissyness, round 2

Wanna see a big phat privacy hole on Orkut? Go to messages. Click compose. Click "friends and friends of friends." Click next. Copy & paste all of your friends and their friends' email addresses.

Oh, but don't worry, you can't delete either your account, your photos or any of your friends! (update: i am wrong about friends.. see comments) So, do you really trust the friends of those friends who keep adding everyone and their mother to the network?

Don't worry, when everyone gets the hang of it, you'll get to deal with your Orkut inbox because everyone in any community you're in, or any friends of friends can send you messages there. As if you didn't get enough virus mail this week.

Note for those who explicitly emailed me to ask why i'm particularly cranky about Orkut, why not other sites... 1) I am notoriously critical of all of the YASNS sites; 2) i made the reference to Jar Jar for a reason.... when you hope something is going to be really good because you have respect for the company behind it and the creation comes out to be insulting to the core, you can't help but walking out of the theatre feeling sick to your stomache. Sure, i realize that it's alpha. But there are enough shitty YASNS out there for Google to join in and insult us through privacy violations, a dreadful ToS, non-functional software and poorly thought out social consequences.

Update: Chris posted a response from Orkut in the comments. They say that it is not a privacy hole because only the names of your friends that make their email addresses available are shown. On one hand, it is really good to hear that this is a known and intentional approach. On the other, this is not the perception that i would imagine people would have when they see that long list. This is a good example of actual privacy vs. perceived privacy. While one might think that users should just get it, this is an example where the owner should really be better about explaining what's going on and giving people an option to opt-out.

Speaking of which, can i opt out of the friends-of-friends sending messages to me?

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 5:25 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack (11)

venting my contempt for orkut

As i write this, it's down again. But that doesn't mean that i haven't been thinking about it. And dear god, everyone and their mother has written about it. At the bottom of this rant, i've included some of the ones that have been making me think (and i've been reading a *lot*).

OK... so my take on Orkut.

1) What the hell is up with the elitist approach to invitation? That's just outright insulting and an attempt to pre-configure the masses through what the technorati are doing. Social networks are not just a product of technologists. Everyone has a social network and what they do with it is quite diverse. To demand that they behave by the norms of technologists is horrifying.

2) Are trustworthy, cool, and sexy the only ways that i might classify my friends? (Even Orkut lists a lot more in his definition of self.) And since when can i rate the people that i know based on this kind of metric?

And goddamnit CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT. Cool as a techy? Cool as a party kid? Trustworthy along what fucking axes?

3) Explain to me why one must be a friend to be a fan of someone? The role of fan is inherently a power differential, not an equalizer. (Don't get me wrong: on Orkut, there's definitely pressure to reciprocate.) The people that i'm a fan of are not my friends; they're idols; they're people that i read on the interweb but do not know.

It is sooo weird to read which of my friends are a fan of me. Does that mean that the rest are only following social custom in linking to me? Does that mean that they don't really respect me? [Or does it mean, like it means to me, that it's too bloody weird to consider checking off that fan bit?]

And worse... i can see who is a fan of others. This means that i can check on my friends and figure out that they're using the fan feature... just not on me. Hello, socially awkward.

4) What's up with the popular crowd hierarchy both in visual and Friends/Communities listing? Have we not learned that this motivates bad behavior?

5) Hell, haven't we learned ANYTHING? We still have articulation. But worse, now that everyone is paying attention to this, the network isn't growing naturally. You jump on. Fast. And connect to everyone you recognize. WTF? And what the hell are you supposed to DO once you get on the damn thing?

6) And boy is it irritating that everything is broken. I know it's an alpha, but it's too popular to withstand the interest. Can't change picture on certain parts. Can't delete account. Can't get rid of picture. And what's up with the regular crashes?

7) And then there are the Terms that show contempt for academics. There's a blanket ban on robots, collecting information, reverse engineering, and other "unauthorized" use (hello, fair use). You can't even link from the damn thing (i.e. i can't identify myself outside of the constraints of Orkut... like on my own site or identifying a research project in which i'd like people to participate. Thus, i can't use a social networking tool to fucking social network). Of course, there's not much appreciation for anyone else either. THEY OWN EVERYTHING YOU POST!!! You CAN'T OPT OUT! Complete registration only.

And don't worry... they can modify the ToS without any notice.

I'm sure more rants are to follow. But in the meantime, tell me why i'm wrong. Cause i'm cranky and disappointed. Everyone's all excited because it's Google. But i feel like i just met Jar Jar.

.......

Boris - traffic stat comparisons of Orkut vs. other sites

Anne on why she deleted her account. [Also, i want to read the link to the failure of social networks, but they've reached their bandwidth limit. Stupid fucking ISP.]

Jill on the patchwork view of one's network

Jay on a fantastic metaphor, paralleling Orkut with a hotel lobby or cruise ship

Foe Romeo on a social network ideal

Anti-Mega on why Orkut lacks innovation

David on the politics of the ToS wrt ownership of identity

Marc Canter on being banned from Orkut

Wired on Social Nets Not Making Friends

Liz - an Orkut analysis

Ross on why Orkut doesn't work for him

Weinberger on the problems with the expectation to increase nodes

Clay on the Orkut craze

Dina on her blog as her social network (and why Orkut)

Update: additional references

Jeremy on why Google needs Orkut

Lee - another good rant on Orkut

Mary on building a social network site in 24 hours... on privacy... and on collecting baseball cards

Halley on Orkut invitation frustration

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 12:49 AM | Comments (62) | TrackBack (77)

January 29, 2004

invites to Orkut on eBay

Only on eBay.... An Orkut invite went for $11. [There are other ones for sale still.]

Also, for $10, you can purchase "How to make money using ORKUT.com."

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:17 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (4)

January 27, 2004

Wanted: personal social network coordinator

Jason Kottke posted a fake ad on Craigslist that perfectly encapsulates the sentiment i have towards the YASNS phenonmenon these days.

Continue reading "Wanted: personal social network coordinator"

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

January 23, 2004

on orkut

OK... the social networking phenomenon has screamed again. This time, orkut. [Read the CJNET article.]

Personally, i'd like to see where they're going with this. As it stands, it doesn't look much different than any of the other YASNS pieces and there are still kinks that are irritating. But one thing's for sure... if Google can't figure out how to optimize a network computationally, no one can.

I'm just still so uncertain about sites that do explicit articulated networks. And i'm certainly not motivated to contact friends and beg them to join. Of course, if you're on there and want to find me, i'm using the name i use for all sites that refuse lower case names.

Update: Please note that i'm purposely not commenting on Orkut for a few days. Of course, i'd love to hear your thoughts, but i'm holding my tongue for a bit.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 2:10 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

social networking software + me = Etech

For those who will be at Emerging Tech this year, i'll be giving a presentation on the tension between users and creators in the social networking software space, focusing on how users repurpose technologies to meet their needs.

In addition, Joi Ito, Mimi Ito, Howard Rheingold, Scott Fisher and i will be on a panel about social mobility.

Also, Liz and i are going to gather folks who want to talk about categorizing blogs.

And finally, i'm psyched to attend the Digital Democracy Teach-In.

I hope to see some of you there!

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:34 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

December 25, 2003

The Year in Phrases: Friendster

While i don't have a lot of respect for Fox News, i'm quite humored that they included metrosexuals and Friendster in their year in phrases:

Friendster: Like an online dating site ... but for friends. The site allows people to form networks with their friends, their friends' friends and so on, and is largely used as a hook-up vehicle for single, urban 20-somethings. Several celebrities have confessed to being Friendster addicts, and the site was so popular this year that it was often impossible to sign on.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 2:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 17, 2003

YASNS tool barriers

Christopher Allen blogged notes on his experiences with various social network software tools, highlighting the barriers to entry and participation.

Category: yasns

   

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December 11, 2003

cracking the social code

Here's a neat (older) article by Stowe Boyd on a few social issues that complicate the social networking software space.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:50 AM | TrackBack (0)

November 5, 2003

huminity

Everyone keeps asking me about Huminity, since it just got some funding.

Unfortunately, i only know what i can see on the site since i am a Mac person. So, if you have experiences with Huminity, please let me know...

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

October 26, 2003

connecting urban tribes and friendster

Oh, yay - Ethan Watters connected Urban Tribes and Friendster in a Nerve interview. Now, if only we could show the tribes....

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

October 24, 2003

Are friends the key to privacy?

I'm With Stupid: How Having Friends Might Be the Key to Both Privacy and Identity is a great article by Robert X. Cringely. In it, he addresses what the key questions are when we talk about privacy and identity. He teases apart the difference between "is this accurate data" and "are you who you say you are." He addresses both extremists. And finally, he suggests how spam and other privacy issues might be addressed through a friends of friend network. A good read!

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Posted by zephoria at 7:43 AM | TrackBack (0)

October 23, 2003

Techsploitation

Annalee Newitz's latest "Techsploitation" addresses reality RPG (role-playing-games) with a funny address to Tribe.net:

Yet another kind of reality RPG is Tribe.net, an uncensored online community that resembles Friendster in almost every way except for the fact that there is no autocratic dictator named Jonathan Abrams running the thing and deleting the accounts of people who freak him out. At Tribe.net you log in and create an identity for yourself, complete with as much or as little real information as you like. You can be an entirely fictional creation, complete with fake photos, or you can document your every little personality quirk, from a love of data mining to a predilection for farting quietly in movie theaters. The game of Tribe, such as it is, is to accumulate as many friends and tribal affiliations as you can. The more often you log in and post messages to tribe discussion boards, the more friends you'll get and the more satisfied you'll be. It's like creating a group of Sims characters. "You" watch "yourself" moving around in a social space, and "you" interact with a bunch of other "people" in "rooms."

Who are all these people on Tribe anyway? As if I were some wide-eyed social critic from the late 1980s, I find myself discovering once again that people are different online than they are in person. Shy people are eloquent. Sexy people are boring. I have two busy friends, whose presence I often miss in real life, whom I now get to see nearly everyday on Tribe.

"Wow, Jason and Liz are so cool!" I think as I read their Tribe posts. "I wish they existed in real life!" And then I realize they do exist; I saw them last year at a party, and they are indeed as funny and smart as their "selves" on Tribe.

Am I confused or just happy to see them? Am I going to the store or is this just a game? I'll have to decide.

(Bolding for the sentence that humored me the most)

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 4:08 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

October 16, 2003

Tickle

eMode just launched Tickle publicly (YASNS). Read more at CNet

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Posted by zephoria at 2:05 AM | TrackBack (0)

October 14, 2003

the new communities

Here's an article on the business side of "the new communities" sites. And here's one telling us that viral communities are back. (An example quote from the former: "models like Friendster, Ryze and Deanlink are milestones on the road to what could be the most powerful online marketing model yet." )

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 12:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

October 8, 2003

contextualizing a social network website

[posted to Many-to-Many]

Recently, i've heard people moan about having to maintain multiple profiles and social networks on the myriad of YASNS. I totally understand the hassle. In real life, i seem to do fine with one faceted social network and i only have on identity, right?

Unfortunately, the problem is that the sites actually play a significant role in shaping what we present. The clearest separation is between Friendster and LinkedIn. When people have accounts on both, they tend to put forward their goofy side on Friendster and their professional side on LinkedIn. Plus, while you may be able to recommend your party buddy as a date, could you properly recommend her in a work context? The sites provide the context so as to encourage a fracturing of the social network and identity presentation.

This is not identical to our offline behavior. In RL, we own our identity; we live it; it is who we are, not some articulated presentation of self maintained by a third party. Thus, the context shifts as our interaction shifts. But online we turn Goffman on his head. The context is stable; each site has a clear look, feel and purpose. Thus, we articulate and give up ownership of a constructed snapshot of our identity to each given site. We choose the contexts based on where our identity fits.

By restructuring the context-driven identity presentation model, we create new dilemmas. Do we really want to collapse the different networks? To do so would mean a collapse of contexts. Isn't this fundamentally the concern? Each site is trying to make its niche by targeting a specific population with specific contextualized needs.

Of course, in my ideal world, we want to restructure these social networks to more closely resemble the offline behavior. Personal ownership of one's social network with properly faceted social networks and presentations of self. (Note to FOAF folks: build in faceting, please.)

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

October 6, 2003

Will You Buy a Car From This Man?

Will You Buy a Car From This Man? is a new Wired article about Tribe.

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Posted by zephoria at 9:37 AM | TrackBack (0)

September 23, 2003

Cash from contacts

Cash from contacts is a BBC article that discusses LinkedIn's model of letting the have nots have access to the haves.

Continue reading "Cash from contacts"

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Posted by zephoria at 12:37 PM | TrackBack (0)

September 16, 2003

the idiot savant

Abe's latest reflections on Friendster are fantastic. He iconifies Jonathan as an idiot savant, accidentally stumbling on brilliance.

[Side note: the notion of Friendster as the product of an idiot savant makes me deliciously happy as my dear friend used to pound a mantra in my head during college: don't attribute to maliciousness what you can attribute to stupidity. Perhaps a rephrasing is due... Don't attribute to brilliance what you can attribute to luck.]

In his entry, Abe argues that Friendster's success is going to be hard to top, that its growth must be analyzed and that much of it can be attributed to Friendster's simple no-nonsense style. He does directly attack my point about Friendster fading, which makes me think that i need to readdress it since i still believe in it, but also believe in what he is saying.

The problem with Friendster (in its current incarnation) is that it has little motivation for people to return, manage their network or otherwise keep coming back after the fun wears off. Unless Friendster figures out how to address these problems, it will fade. To do so, Friendster needs to evolve beyond a dating-only model, which seems unlikely. That is why i see Friendster as fading and others emerging. Of course, an alternate course would be that Friendster figures out that it cannot squeeze a square peg into a round hole and adjust its model. Somehow, the savant part of Abe's conception is dropped here.

I *definitely* agree that conversion is dreadfully impossible. But i also believe that conversion implies that the best model is to maintain an articulated network. I think that's going to continue to be problematic and i think that the next evolution of these networks will have to address that head-on. That said, i also know that the dating model does not appeal to everyone and that there is an age cut-off on Friendster that allows for a larger market than Friendster currently addresses. I definitely think Friendster will be around in a year, but i don't think it will be the same tool. I think that it will be a dating site with limited appeal and a lot of folks who had "been there, done that."

Of course, i'm speculating like the next person and will enjoy being proven wrong.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 12:26 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

August 26, 2003

Tribe.net focuses on users

Geekbox (an early user of Tribe.net) blogs about how Tribe.net is focusing on meeting the needs and interests of users. He addresses various features and comments on how creating Tribes addresses some of the weaknesses of articulated networks.

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Posted by zephoria at 2:51 PM | TrackBack (0)

August 25, 2003

The Network is the Market

In The Network is the Market, Ross Mayfield argues for the value of reputation and networks when engaging in economic transactions. In his discussion, he evaluates Tribe.net as a means of addressing this in the digital domain.

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Posted by zephoria at 10:46 PM | TrackBack (0)

August 20, 2003

Six Degrees as YASNS: It all comes full circle

Clay Shirky notes that Six Degrees is no longer 404 and ponders what this might mean. It certainly would be interesting to see them rise from the dead.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:23 AM | TrackBack (1)

August 17, 2003

community collapsing

In Friendster Sucks, pt1 -- Community Sharing, rmger argues for why he detests Friendster community collision, noting that failure to control what information spreads doesn't only disempower the bridge individual, but it puts the different groups at risk simply because they have trust assumptions about the bridge's relationship to other groups.

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August 16, 2003

geekbox

GeekBox has two interesting blog entries on social networks this week:

Attack of the Clones clearly articulates why Jonathan is making a poor decision in killing fake characters. To summarize his stance, "I wasn't a big fan of the fakesters on Friendster, but seeing this really corporate, dull clamp-down on what Friendster's users are doing, I find myself rooting for the fakesters." The entry continues on to discuss how other communities are formed and managed, referencing Slashdot's reputation system and Craigslist's notorious community of trust.

Tribe.net Strikes Back is posted as a follow-up, commending Tribe for learning from the mistakes that Friendster is making and otherwise "getting it"

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Posted by zephoria at 10:08 PM | TrackBack (0)

August 15, 2003

hub death

From Marc Canter's blog...

Alec Matusis has been spidering his Friendster accounts and has come up with a nice table of the Top 40 Friendster hubs.  Watch their accounts be turned off - as Jonathan Abrams et al - do their thang.

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August 14, 2003

Social networks got game

I really like Jay Fienberg's reflections based on various posts of mine. Drawing from his arguments:

1) gaming is half of the draw of these sites (and thus failing to properly support and acknowlege this put the creator at a disadvantage);

2) expecting real identity without social or political regulation and meaningful consequences for failing to conform is naive;

3) rule enforcement without meaningful consequences encourages anti-establishment activities that undermine attempts at rule enforcement.

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Posted by zephoria at 10:48 PM | TrackBack (0)

August 12, 2003

Tribe.net hits the blogs

Tribe.net is currently in early beta, yet it has already appeared on a wide variety of blogs. [Tribe.net is YASNS focus on 1) Recommendations and listings (housemates, for sale, etc.) and 2) Letting people connect with their groups of friends.]

Marc Canter [29 July 2003] - reflections by Marc on Tribe and the lessons that are being learned; references to other's experiences

Jason Lefkowit [28 July 2003] - Jason is frustrated with the YASNS phenomenon, particularly because of its requirement to harangue one's friends. His friend points out that it would be far more useful if those with power and influence were a part of the system.

Michael Radwin [4 August 2003] - puts the YASNS phenomenon in historical context and hints at why he's hesistent to use these systems. [Sidenote: Michael was one of my TAs at Brown! How cool to run into someone this way.]

Pedro Alocer [8 August 2003] - without the sex, what's the point?

Where's the Smoke? [5 August 2003] - the author asks what the difference is between Tribe.net and Friendster and his readers comment back that it is both the focus on Tribes and the blending of Friendster meets Craigslist

William Blaze [28 July] - William notes that Tribe's look and feel doesn't work for him, but also likes that Tribe seems open to changes

Liz Lawley [6 August 2003] - Fake characters appear early on Tribe.net. Liz is asked if she's a friend of Jesus.

Popdex - a list of links to blogs that are talking about Tribe.net

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August 8, 2003

Mapping and honing our interconnections

Mapping and honing our interconnections is an APWire/USAToday article about Spoke and Visible Path. These companies are using mined email data to construct organization's social networks (similar to Social Network Fragments).

Continue reading "Mapping and honing our interconnections"

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Posted by zephoria at 12:04 PM | TrackBack (1)

July 21, 2003

Too much broadband in the water supply?

Forbes just published an interesting piece about online culture in South Korea, arguably the most wired society in the world, where access to broadband is unprecedented and even your parents know what avatars are. If this is what our high-speed future looks like in the U.S., we should be thankful the bottom fell out of the telecom industry.

"When the Slammer virus shut down Internet service for several hours in Korea in January, the whole country suffered from withdrawal symptoms, says Ken Lee, chairman of Korea Telecom, the nation's biggest broadband provider. Some 10% of the general population and 40% of 13- to 18-year-olds are addicted to the Net, says Dr. Kim Hyun Soo, 37, head of Korea's professional society for psychologists specialized in treating Internet addiction. "I have seen kids who have not left the house for two years," he says. "

Acute lack of irony: the kid in the article who is punished for stealing money from his parents to accessorize his avatar can't surf the net past midnight and is forced to spend time with his family . . . watching TV.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 5:58 PM | TrackBack (0)

Is Identity About Ownership or Assertion?

Is Identity About Ownership or Assertion? is an article by Eric Norlin as part of the DigitalIDWorld conference. Summary: "The Digital Identity ecosystem is a large one. One of the corners of that ecosystem is the "social software" movement. Many of the individuals and companies involved in social software talk about identity in terms of ownership. In this article, Eric examines whether the power of identity lies in ownership or assertion..."

My problem with this article is that Eric doesn't ground what he's referring to when he talks about idenitity. From my definition of "idenity" there's no question about who owns identity. Identity can only be owned by the individual, because it is far more than simply the validity that someone exists. The problem is that most people think of identity as what facets people present, what data people produce, and what bits can provide authentication. The thing is that identity can't be copied and stored, but the pointers to and output of one's identity can be.

Also, when it comes to the power of assertion regarding one's identity, everyone must read Judith Donath's "Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community."

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 2:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

The Unspoken of Groups

The Unspoken of Groups is a recapitulation of David Weinberger's ETech talk. In it, Weinberger talks about the problems with articulating one's identity in sites like Friendster as well as contemplating the power of groups in digital social interaction.

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Posted by zephoria at 2:18 PM | TrackBack (0)

July 9, 2003

clay shirky on ringo

In discussing Ringo, Clay Shirky addresses his concern that our friends's trust are not transitive:

A is my sister. B is me. C is my meth dealer. D is his "debt collector." My relationship wiht my sister includes her trusting me not to introduce her to known criminals. Any service that proposes to remove me from deciding which introductions to broker doesn't get my business.

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July 5, 2003

Livewire: Web Sites Try to Make Internet Dating Less Creepy

Livewire: Web Sites Try to Make Internet Dating Less Creepy - another descriptive article about Friendster

Continue reading "Livewire: Web Sites Try to Make Internet Dating Less Creepy"

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Posted by zephoria at 4:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 9, 2003

reflecting on LinkedIn

The emergence of social networks sites delights me, but i'm struggling to understand the value of LinkedIn as anything novel or specifically advantageous. My concern is that the site will immediately appeal to all of us obsessed with social networks (specifically those who love them for business purposes), but that it's value outside of a specific subset is limited. I would *love* to be proved wrong (because i really want to see social networks become more prevalent on the web and i think that Ryze / Friendster / LinkedIn are fabulous learning opportunities). Here are my concerns...

1) LinkedIn gives public kudos to the heavy Connectors by listing them in order in the Network. This is important because social validation helps encourage the role of the Connector. The problem is that one of the best validating measures is when the Connector introduces two people who are compatible in the appropriate context. Connector validation is hidden in LinkedIn. When you want to get to know someone, you have to write them a message and then you get to see your first link towards that person. But you don't see the path.

2) Links weaken over distance. The greater the degrees of separation, the harder it is to vouch for someone. If the connections are A-B-C-D and A wants to meet D, B & C have to decide if that's appropriate, but that's a much harder call than when there is only one person in between. LinkedIn makes it hard to figure out the distance.

3) You value people's connections for different reasons, even in business land. You probably don't trust your *amazing* HR person to recommend a programmer, while you'd love their recommendation on a sales person or something closer to their expertise. Without a viewable network, this becomes challenging to operate.

4) How does the system become trustworthy enough to be valued by all involved? When would you not do introductions when asked? What are the social consequences of such actions? If someone indicated that you are their "friend", would you say no? Again, social consequences...

5) The profile interface is soooo limiting. When i'm hiring consultants, i use a lot more than their job experiences. I look at their skills, their educational training, their personal interests (including volunteer habits). Character is so crucial in connecting people, but the system limits one's ability to voice that. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words.

6) Finding people is frustrating as anything. Searching simply based on location OR what they're looking for/offering OR their industry? Actually, i have a problem with searching in general, because it makes the system appear to be a simple professional DB that limits your searching based on an assumption that you only want to meet people a few degrees apart. It's true; i'm far more likely to hire folks a few degrees a part. But, i'm not likely to do a limited search and then see if the connections might be of interest to me. I'd be far more likely to use the system if i could limit the network and then walk through my network to see which people fit my needs. Or better yet, a big visual overview of the network, graying out all of the people who didn't fit my needs, letting me see my first degree connectors and letting me click on people down paths i'm curious about.

OK... Tell me i'm wrong and missing the picture.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:04 PM | Comments (1)

March 26, 2003

ryze.com

Apparently, i should've known about ryze.com for quite some time (as it's basically friendster with the focus being on finding business connections). Of course, the thing is that this reverts to my typical problem: i am *not* a business girl... really, i just wish someone would know what to do with my skills and put me to work. I'd be good at that.

Category: yasns

   

Posted by zephoria at 6:20 PM