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.

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.

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::

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

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.

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.]

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]

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.

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)

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