Category Archives: Uncategorized

visualizing friendster

[from my connected selves blog]

OMG. Ben Discoe visualized Friendster from his perspective. Tell me that’s not gorgeous! ::bounce::

Of course, as he properly points out, it is only a static image from his perspective without all of the proper interconnections. And the clusters are a bit confusing because not all of those people are evenly interconnected. That’s why the visualization of an n-degree system is such a pain in the toosh.

[I should note that the first question after my SIGGRAPH talk was “Would it be possible to visualize Friendster?”]

OK.. i so want one of my own. And i so badly want to analyze this data. Wah!!

Friendster banned in the workplace

I received three reports today of Friendster being banned in the workplace. Of those, only one person told me which companies (Wiley and Salmon Smith Barney). In the latter case, the writer notes “in the case of ssb, it’s just a sad
story of an evil employer that makes its employees work crazy hours and then doesn’t allow them to try to make external friends. this sort of asymmetric work/life fusion shouldn’t be tolerated.”

This raises an interesting question… In theory, dating is not really permissable at work, right? You’re there to be productive and productive only. With the tech boom, life revolved around work. Thus, those lines started to really blend. Ironically, there has been a significant backlash against those blended lines, yet the number of hours at work has not declined (in the States).

On one hand, i definitely realize that Friendster is more of a distraction than Solitaire (and that’s often banned). On the other, it’s painful to watch us turn into a corporate society where life is solely about work.

multiple YASNS contexts

OK.. earlier i posted that one of the most powerful things about these services is that they provide an additional context in which to recognize people, right? People that you recognize from the bar suddenly become accessible when you see them on Friendster. Well, i have a new phenomenon going on in my participation on these services. It seems as though people think that it’s totally appropriate to add one as a Friend when they recognize them from another YASNS. I find this very peculiar, although it does validate my feeling that these services provide an additional meaningful context.

Everything is Political

Everything is Political is Paul Krugman’s latest op-ed. In it, he argues that major departments of our government continue to become more and more corrupt and controlled by those in power. ::sigh:: So much for balance of power.

I have to admit that i’m both outraged and exhausted with being outraged. Of course, this is even more frustrating because i know that’s how those in power maintain power.

Speaking of which, oh boy am i dreading the California recall election. Half of the punk San Franciscan culture kids are running, viewing the whole thing as a joke. Of course, this only strengthens the Republican side so i end up wanting to *strangle* these folks because the last thing that i want to see in California is a Republican governor. Dear me oh my.

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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.