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articulated vs. behavior-driven networks

This morning, i presented Social Network Fragments to an audience of computer graphics aficionados. The talk went well and, conveniently, I finished up by talking about the emergence of articulated social networking systems. I say that this was convenient because folks were riled up to talk about Friendster and thus focused their questions on that.

In the process of giving this talk (and answering 2 hours of on and off stage questions), i found myself addressing a clear distinction between behavior-driven networks (i.e. email, phone records), articulated networks (i.e. LJ, blogrolling, Friendster, etc.) and real social networks. Neither behavior-driven or articulated networks are actually completely representative of an individual’s real network. They are both stand-ins used by researchers and system designers to deal with the fact that people have a deep understanding of the nuances of their relationships, yet they are dreadful at discussing them.

Many social networks researchers ask people to list their closest friends. In these scenarios, there is little motivation to impress the researcher, yet people are still not exact about prioritizing and indicating everyone in their life. In public articulated networks, a whole new conundrum appears one has to articulate one’s network as a public essence and thus must also show face in doing so. Behavior-driven networks are not the end-all-be-all either. I talk to many people more often than my best friend, but it’s the depth and value of our conversations that make her so important to me.

When it comes to devising systems that capitalize on people’s networks, we’re pretty dreadful at assuring that they are truly meaningful. They are improperly segmented, poorly prioritized and their public nature requires them to be quite artificial. Additionally, articulation of our identity in any form is not our best suit. Figuring out how to take this into account is quite fascinating. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between behavior-driven and articulation? Perhaps not.

Tribe.net launches

Tribe.net launched in beta form (discussed on boingboing). Tribe is focused on providing users with a way to use their social network to gain access to listings, recommendations and other Craigslike-esque features. There is also a greater emphasis on “Tribes” (a.k.a. groups) that allows people to gather, post announcements and otherwise share amongst particular groups of interest.

harassing messages

I would like to highlight one of the comments posted in reference to Friendster censoring images. Mer quite succinctly reflects the problem with Friendster’s decision to censor – namely the arbitrary nature of it. In her post, she raises concern that Friendster is willing to censor images arbitrarily, but does not censor messages that could be construed as hate or harassment (or their senders). It will be interesting to see what the implications of their haphazard use of censorship will be.

LiveJournal behaviors

Recently, i’ve been engaged in conversations about behaviors that occur on LiveJournal in relation to the articulated “Friends” element that occurs in many social network systems.

one i call crossfriending. it happens when people meet across mailing lists or other forums. they add each other and their friends list slowly converge after people talk to each other on the fringe overlaps.

the other i call social friending. it used to be that you went to a convention and met people. if you liked them, you would trade addresses (and probably lose them), phone numbers or even cities of origin. then came email addresses. but now you have a livejournal account and all that has to be remembered is a short line of text. the rest – location, domain, identity – is encoded in the address.

what’s interesting to watch is when people meet at local events and add each other afterwards. the jump in connections may take up to a week, but it’s actually visible and measurable.

This type of behavior on LJ could easily be describe Friendster connections as well.

creating explicit connectors

On Friendster, one often sees fake characters that operate as connectors due to a shared interest in a given topic. Simpsons fans might all link to Bart. Likewise, you see “urban tribe” connectors (members of Infinite Kaos connect with the character o the similar name). I’ve also seen alumni characters (Brown University is the one fake character i link to). What made me happy this morning is how explicit people are getting about the purpose of these connecctors.

Black is a character on Friendster whose “about me” profile reads:

Hey ladies, Black is a connector node on the network, not a real person. The sole purpose of this profile page is to create a place where black women seeking women can find each other easily on the Friendster network. If someone suggested a match for you and Black, and you’re interested in adding your profile to the list of fine-ass sistas in Black’s friend list, then add Black Women (first name Black, last name Women) right now! We want to meet you! You can also use blackgirlfriendster@yahoo.com to add Black Women.

Of course, this presents a very interesting situation re: Friendster’s dating model. Black is purposely there to help the dating process, but it also collapses the network. Good? Bad? Appropriate only because the number of people identifying with Black will be small?

more Friendster anxiety

Another message is going around on Friendster message boards:

A friend of a friend, who works at the NSA, said that the homeland security department has subpoenaed friendster’s database to weasel out ‘suspected terrorists’. are any of your “friends” on THE LIST???

of course friendster runs on 56k modems… read the front page of the privacy policy. and, horrors if anyone monetizes anything we actually like or use

::sigh::