I read this article about social networking entering the enterprise and i couldn’t help but hold my head in dismay.
I love social networks. They are a part of all of our daily lives and i’m in awe of the sociologists who have dedicated themselves for so many years to figure out how people negotiate them. But as more and more technologists take on the social networks meme, they continue to mutate the concept and thus destroy much of the underlying theory that relies on certain fundamental ideas about interaction.
For me, this creates a linguistic-conceptual nightmare. With every meme that emerges in the tech world, i’m amazed at how much gets attached simultaneously to one concept or phrase. Identity, blogging, social networks… My auto-reaction is to constantly and continuously unpack what people _mean_ when they use these terms. This has become quite challenging lately because the reason people collide them in their heads is to make metaphors work. I never realized how important these metaphors are to people’s ability to construct technology.
The first two of my examples are easier than social networks. As a term, identity is often used to mean authentication. Sometimes, it is meant to mean social stature; sometimes, reputation; sometimes, the more classic psychological notions of one’s id/entity. Blogging has come to represent people who blog, people who journal, people are embedded in the blogging culture (and lately, i’ve watched it get further extended to discuss anyone who updates a site regularly). [One thing that continues to amaze me as i meet self-described ‘bloggers’ is how often they don’t realize that most people’s goals in blogging are vastly different than their own…]
Social networks are harder to tease apart because it’s the framework that’s different, yet there is an expectation that the classic theories apply. Until new theories are developed to address the digital social network tools, it’s quite a bit harder to unpack this concept, to discuss why it’s different online than off. Of course, that’s my job….
Memer, metaforer och bloggning
I social networking overload skriver danah boyd bl.a. nedanstende aprop en artikel om corporate social networking (ytterligare en variant av social network-tanken). With every meme that emerges in the tech world, i’m amazed at how much gets attached …
social networking overload
I enjoyed meeting Dana this weekend, and am now enjoying her blog(s). Here’s one to ponder…. social networking overload I read this article about social networking entering the enterprise and i couldn’t help but hold my head in dismay….Social netwo…
I must admit… my version of “blogging” is to avoid emailing all my friends things I think they should know about 24 hours a day… I’m not a big fan of themes… that’s just not me. I guess I could have a “talking about the belly button” blog and then a more substantive one… but that’d take work.
I think your final paragraph hits the nail on the head exactly. Social Networks and online ones in particular appear to be simple (X is connected to Y), organized, transparent from the users (and perhaps the technologists) perspective, but really, it’s much more complicated than that, and the old theories do not apply, elegantly or sometimes even at all.
Hiya- Nice to meet you (via a link to the NYT article on one of the Burning Man lists- but I live in Oaktown and am working on the community for Ubisoft’s Uru… great to meet you!) Though! Not sure that I agree… Certainly some of the tools and mechanisms differ, and different value mixes have risen to the top in many communities, but the same motivations and human dynamics are in play, and can be affected in similar ways. Certainly Burning Man’s a great example of that- taking people to a relatively blank space creates the possibilities for new cultural and social manifestations- and these can be very similar to some of the core values one sees expressed in many online communities: the freedom of the individual, respect for others in community, sharing, etc. People’s motivations are similar, given a space to play in, similar embedded social desires emerge. Or at least, that’s how I see it these days…
All of this confusion about what the term “Social Networking” means is one of the reasons the “Semantic Web” won’t work:
Our motivations for self-categorization create a “tragedy of the commons” problem: We share a language, but we exploit (dilute) its word definitions for our personal gain.
Social Networking and IT employment Opportunities
Figured I would take the opportunity to share an interesting conversation as well as solicit the help of the community to find some candidates interested in working for a cool company……