Yay to David Weinberger for another good breakdown on why social networking software is socially peculiar (through logic).
He’s reacting specifically to Jeremy Zawodny’s commentary that includes a great little quote that resonates well with my thoughts on the matter:
If you really think that Friendster, Tribe, LinkedIn, or any of those other sites are going to survive doing what they’re doing today, you’re really smoking something. However, if you think that also means the technology isn’t worthwhile–that the notion of modeling social networks in software is a pointless exercise, well then you’re really smoking something good. You couldn’t be more wrong.
Of course, my favorite quote out of his commentary is his call for action:
Start thinking about how adding a social networking component to existing systems could improve them.
Jeremy’s blog entry also sparked Ev to offer one of his favorite truisisms:
We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.
This is a great quote given the approach that social software is taking. Here we are, asking others to make explicit and actionable their social behavior. Yet, we do not understand this ourselves; we only understand our intentions wrt social behavior. Furthermore, as the models we build do not exactly mimic the real world, we expect others to follow the same social mores and understand our intentions in performance. For example, no one is consistent about what they present on their blogs, Friendsters, wikis. Everyone has what they think are the appropriate norms and thus they read others actions based on these perceived norms. No wonder we’re all quite confused.
And how is that different from interaction offline?
Brayden – and how is _what_ different from interaction offline? In case a general answer helps, i believe that social interaction is social interaction, online or offline. That said, artifacts and visibility are just two examples of changes that can alter behavior. The core interaction is not different, but when you are performing to the public or to an audience different than expected, your behavior is certain to change.
social networking roundup
I’m going in for another interview at Friendster today. Mostly coincidentally, I also ran across a whole slew of reading and commentary about social networking. Appropriately, all these people’s blogs interlink.
What I think is so interesting here, and worth talking about further, is the problem of social online performance. Often, the discussion revolves around issues of destabilized identity: a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman in order to make a point on a MUD, for example. In this case, however, we’re not talking about the performance of identity, but the performance of _affinity_.
The key difference, as danah has pointed out, is the _explicitly_ and asynchronously performative aspect of online social networks. I’m not going to argue that on-line interaction is a “performance” of affinity for an audience of other community members and that off-line interaction is somehow _not_ a performance. We’ve all had to be publicly civil at family reunions to people we can’t stand.
Rather, as argued, the sticking point is the way social applications expose woozily-defined social connections to an unknown – and ever-growing – number of fellow users. It’s not that social connections online are modelled in a way that doesn’t reflect the “real world” – much of what happens in the “real world” is misleading too – but that the perception of social connections on Friendster and elsewhere is not limited by physical or temporal constraints. There’s no immediate feedback mechanism, as there is in a chat room, say, to make sure everyone knows that your “good friend” is only a friend-in-scare-quotes.
Obviously, the separation of affinity from temporal context is an exciting thing for efficient social networking. In retrospect, however, a backlash against the disappearance of the subtle cues that underwrote even written communication in bounded social groups was, I guess, inevitable.
In an office setting, especially a large company, the practice of social networking could drive a number of positive enterprise related outcomes. Through social networking individuals could better form cross-functional teams, search for internal promotions, and spurn on new product development.
To Liz’s “sticking point is the way social applications expose woozily-defined social connections to an unknown – and ever-growing – number of fellow users.” I argue that in a business setting that sense of a ‘stranger’ is mitigated based on the premise that you are all in the same boat attempting the same end result. It is true that office relationships in the 21st century can be 100% virtual as team members are spread all over the world, connected only by e-mail and telephone, however I feel that there will be the shared vested interest of work that forms bonds stronger than sharing affinity for the same movie star, or band.
In an office setting, especially a large company, the practice of social networking could drive a number of positive enterprise related outcomes. Through social networking individuals could better form cross-functional teams, search for internal promotions, and spurn on new product development.
To Liz’s “sticking point is the way social applications expose woozily-defined social connections to an unknown – and ever-growing – number of fellow users.” I argue that in a business setting that sense of a ‘stranger’ is mitigated based on the premise that you are all in the same boat attempting the same end result. It is true that office relationships in the 21st century can be 100% virtual as team members are spread all over the world, connected only by e-mail and telephone, however I feel that there will be the shared vested interest of work that forms bonds stronger than sharing affinity for the same movie star, or band.