Over and over again, people tell me that one of the YASNS is *far* better than any of the other ones. Usually, they want me to agree with them. Sometimes, people just ask me which one i think is best.

Given that this is me, i have a problem with this question. My problem is not personal or political… it’s contextual. In this case, “best” is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, i often ask people what *they* want in a YASNS. Almost always, there’s one overwhelming factor that makes one YASNS better than another for the individual: “people like me.”

In a post-finals hallucinatory state, i decided to attend a gathering with some of my peers last December. A group gathered into a “panel” to talk about social software. One very smart, very respected VC spoke about how she believed that LinkedIn was hands down the best YASNS. I found myself speaking… or more accurately exploding because of her conception. It’s not that i don’t believe that LinkedIn was the best for her – i truly do. It’s that i don’t believe that there is a universal best.

When i was interviewing early Friendster adopters about the site, over and over again, they told me that they loved it because it was a site fool of cool hipsters like them. They identified with the people on the site and they loved feeling like everywhere they turned, they saw other people that they thought were cool. They were not looking forward to it being mainstream because then there will be duds on the system. Each sub-hipster group was likely to run across more people like them depending on their linking structure. (Homophily again.) Because most people joined under one context, they never saw the other “non-hipsters” that they dealt with in everyday life. When that started happening, they were disappointed.

When Orkut exploded, all of the social software fiends jumped on the train like it was going to Disney World. It was the end-all be-all of the YASNS. Of course it was… to them… It was filled with people like them – their colleagues, those that they respect, etc. It felt like home.

Guess what? At Tribe.net, there are lots of people who feel at home and spend exorbitant hours on the service. Same with MySpace. Same with Everyone’s Connected. Same with Live Journal.

The battle is not simply about the best tools. In fact, that’s a truly secondary issue. It’s about motivating a coherent group to join, participate and make it home. What makes the best pub? Is it really the beer or the price? Hell, the only reason that the music usually matters is because it draws people that you like to the pub. It’s the combination of environment and people.. but the environment brings the people so the environment DOES matter.

There’s an architectural lesson there… Environment matters because it draws the right people. This is why niche shit works. The biggest joke about the Internet is that the most profitable services are barely public. They address a niche market completely. One of the most unfortunate things about social software is that everyone is trying to court everyone to their service. Frankly, a far more appropriate response would be to try to figure out which users are most suited for your tool given its current state and then try to meet their needs completely. Figure out your audience. And don’t simply focus on your desired audience because the tool you created may not have met their needs… be able to shift if you find that you’ve built something far more appropriate for another group. Cause frankly? If you have, the users know it and are using it more completely there.

[Note: Friendster’s popularity in Asia isn’t because it’s a good tool; it’s because the way the site was structured met that population’s needs/desires without much translation. It was inadvertently and accidentally best for them, not well designed for them.]

On various mailing lists, people were up in arms by this article: Popular social website revealed as college experiment. It argues that Orkut is a class project to collect data and that is why the ToS is so fubared. I was a bit skeptical by the emails, so i was glad to find out that it is truly a hoax. Sorry for ruining it for people. But it really is funny.

Continue reading →

I noticed that Orkut put statistics up. The demographics are fascinating and i’m intrigued to see that 37% of the population is under 25. This means that Orkut has gone into new domains. Mmmm.. yummy.

Of course, i’m less than thrilled to see the member stats. They have it broken down into connectors, celebrities and stars. I wonder how much this motivates different people to connect more, put up sexier pictures, pressure friends to indicate each other as fans, etc. ::sigh::

Dunno where this came from, but it’s a fun visualization of Orkut members in the NY region based on long/lat. It seems as though folks are already scraping Orkut….

Hacking Friendster, Part I is a set of code necessary impact the insecurities in Friendster.

Get Out of Orkut Free is the key to avoiding Orkut. [There’s a Get Out of Orkut JAIL Free one floating out there too]

This morning, i voiced my belief that it is my responsibility to be respectful to the creators of social software by trying to follow their intentions. Marc Canter dropped me a note this morning that truly upset me: “with 135 friends – you’ve now made it to the elite top 9. Congrats.” Marc’s right: this is truly disturbing, apparently hypocritical and not something that i’m thrilled to realize at all.

When i joined Orkut, i made the decision to accept all friendship requests from people that i have spoken with, have actively read, or have an otherwise loose connection. I decided that i would never invite anyone who i don’t consider a friend or colleague, nor ask to friend anyone based on the same metric. Although i would accept friend connections from people that i recognized, i figured that this policy would limit the number of people that i linked to. This has not happened. And now, i’m faced with a profile that makes me look like i’m trying to win some popularity contest. Yuck. Very yuck.

This is precisely why i’m beyond irritated at these things. I am not in a totally social awkward position, wanting to be hidden amidst the crowd, but sticking out like a sore thumb. Yet, how does one proceed properly? Do i start deleting “friends” who i don’t know that well? Where does one insert a black line into a gray continuum? In many ways, Friendster was much more organic for me. I joined with my friend group, connected to people who i intimately knew and was rarely faced with the situation of having to turn away colleagues or people i know from the digital only. I didn’t ask them; they didn’t ask me.

So, this makes me think… what is it about Orkut that has made this an incredibly uncomfortable situation? Is it because we’re a year into YASNS? Is it because we’re tired of regulating boundaries? Is it because the site further promotes popularity? What is it?

Personally, i have a partial guess. I think that because the site advertises people’s popularity at every stage, people are far more likely to connect to the popular people that they recognize because they’re right out there, in front. (Ah, yes, power laws.) Thus, i’m guessing that by inviting a stack of my friends and showing up high early on, later adopters who normally wouldn’t have searched for me saw me and added me, even though i’m not one of their closer friends, but simply a partner in the social discussion space. Perhaps this feature is quite a cultural flaw?

I was a bit miffed to read Marc Canter’s perception of my views:

danah thinks we should treat these relationships more seriously.  Or somehow believe that by calling someone a ‘friend’ in an explicit social networking environment – actually means something.

I am not interested in what users SHOULD do; i’m interested in what they do do. That said, i truly believe that early users help construct the social norms for any given environment. In “Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do,” Scott Feld talks about how people’s understanding of how may friends they should have is constructed by their friends.

Marc – i don’t believe that users should take these relationships more seriously; i believe that YOU should. Users will do whatever they damn well please, and i think that we should learn from them. But out of respect to the creators of these systems, many of whom are our friends, i truly believe that we should respect their goals and not engage in behavior that disrespects their intentions. Furthermore, i believe that we should never be the exceptions on any given service, the ones who push the boundaries. We are not average users. We should sit back and watch what average users do, not try to top them. By engaging in disrespectful behavior, we make it much harder for our friends and colleagues to execute their business plans as they’re busy policing us.

This is about ethics and respect, not about any false notion that these networks actually mean something. This is about business models, strategy, and scalability, not research.

[Lago: i definitely realize that it’s a game; i’m sorry that you thought otherwise.]

I was talking to a friend about my Orkut rant. Orkut really bothered him and he was trying to tease out why. He knew that it bothered him more than Friendster and it wasn’t simply because it was Google. In fact, he really likes Google.

As far as he could tease out, it bothered him mostly because the YASNS phenomenon has been around for a year at this point. Many of the weaknesses have been publicly discussed, particularly around Friendster. “Google had the opportunity to learn from Friendster and the other YASNSes, solving their known issues, but instead they released a tool that was broken in exactly the same way as its ancestors. This doesn’t advance the art, it doesn’t provide new value to users, and, because of Google’s popularity and credibility, it foists the YASNS problems (like the Economy of Bullshit and the social awkwardnesses) on an even larger user-base. Friendster had the excuse that they were breaking new ground and discovering new problems. What’s Google’s excuse?”

Of course, he’s not the only one uncertain about Orkut. Chris articulates his insecurity based on his feelings of being disrespected..

I keep hearing about folks who have been kicked off or “jailed” from Orkut. I’d love to hear more about this. Who all is getting banned? Why? Are you given explanations? What happens when you try to fight?

Wanna see a big phat privacy hole on Orkut? Go to messages. Click compose. Click “friends and friends of friends.” Click next. Copy & paste all of your friends and their friends’ email addresses.

Oh, but don’t worry, you can’t delete either your account, your photos or any of your friends! (update: i am wrong about friends.. see comments) So, do you really trust the friends of those friends who keep adding everyone and their mother to the network?

Don’t worry, when everyone gets the hang of it, you’ll get to deal with your Orkut inbox because everyone in any community you’re in, or any friends of friends can send you messages there. As if you didn’t get enough virus mail this week.

Note for those who explicitly emailed me to ask why i’m particularly cranky about Orkut, why not other sites… 1) I am notoriously critical of all of the YASNS sites; 2) i made the reference to Jar Jar for a reason…. when you hope something is going to be really good because you have respect for the company behind it and the creation comes out to be insulting to the core, you can’t help but walking out of the theatre feeling sick to your stomache. Sure, i realize that it’s alpha. But there are enough shitty YASNS out there for Google to join in and insult us through privacy violations, a dreadful ToS, non-functional software and poorly thought out social consequences.

Update: Chris posted a response from Orkut in the comments. They say that it is not a privacy hole because only the names of your friends that make their email addresses available are shown. On one hand, it is really good to hear that this is a known and intentional approach. On the other, this is not the perception that i would imagine people would have when they see that long list. This is a good example of actual privacy vs. perceived privacy. While one might think that users should just get it, this is an example where the owner should really be better about explaining what’s going on and giving people an option to opt-out.

Speaking of which, can i opt out of the friends-of-friends sending messages to me?