On “Brands”, I do agree that there are meaningful brand differences. Those differences are the catalyst for change in cases – i.e. FB differentiates itself from Myspace.

What I’m describing is the mid-cascade phenomenon, where the brand is present, but the motivation for change is the place. For analogy, we go to the bar/restaurant our friends are at; yes, brand features in the decision, but it’s really about where our friends are hanging out.
In the decision, I’d argue that at the mid-cascade, brand contributes little variance.

With regards to governance, it adds complexity to the user/SNS relation. We’re used to the state or pseudo-state entities enforcing punishment in public places. A non-state acting in the state role is most foreign. Perhaps we’ll reconceptualize place based on these governmental boundaries, and we’ll come to see these as places of control, not of discourse.

- SNS *are* brands, and sometimes coherent foci: a colleague of mine has a MySpace, Flickr & Facebook account, for his musical, family and academic life. No common friends on any —— and he demands it that way. Many people around me agree to that separation model, and see the current concentration wishes as a forced “weddings” where different aspects of who should ignore collide against your will. It’s broader then a brand, maybe, but it is a similar dimension: of course, see danah on that aspect of things.

- You don’t say who are the strangers, while you should: they are not new on-line. University is full of strangers: “Nobodies”, people you can safely ignore, and who won’t blame you for it; someone you want to meet, or not, also have acknowledge roles: targets, freaks. It’s of course over-simplifying, but you have many issues emerging since the opening, and it’s not because the new people are not welcomed, but because they do not fit nicely: you can ignore a dork, not someone you are sympathetic with, but never though about meeting on FaceBook. I don’t really care anyone sees a photo of me with my girlfriend: I just never though such or such would take attention to it — and I have no idea how or what to think about it; my ex? I know she should be kept out, not an issue. I’ve seen the most extremely different groups co-occupy an SNS, safely ignoring themselves. Problem is not people who are different, but ambiguity.

- Your government metaphor is certainly the key piece of the post: a great idea, certainly reflexive of the state of mind behind the recent decisions — all the more nice it fits well into an American “As little government as possible” assumption; not all government need be feeble and transparent: I’m not advocating for socialism (Did that the whole afternoon, I’m starting to hate Econ 101) but some internet communities did great with heavy-handed interventions. More importantly, I really believe this transparency vision is not progressive in the sense that is it the only way to go: it’s not that people want privacy (they want context, actually) but the issues are more about dealing with the complexity of having A takes a picture of B who shouldn’t be with C, D borrow the cam and uploads it by accident while E, unaware of the issue, tags it so that F sees the deed. . . Drama ensues. Who’s responsible?
Complexity demands norms, habits, conventions and those rules (I’m using different words on purpose here) are an odd sauce that demands some government intervention, and some grass-root adoption.

All in all, I’ll keep the metaphor, but try to look at other, local government in order to try to understand the extend of the possible interactions: Local government, University government, Gated community decision process, etc.

Nathan of Swarming Media had a good post where he responded to me, so I’m linking to it here.

Well, mature users have already gotten what they need out of Facebook – they’ve found their friends and, for the most part, have been found by people by whom they want to be found. They’ve made sense of the space and, among other things, don’t need to spend as much time there. This makes the increased stream of information about Facebook (and not about that already-established network) especially vexing – they log in less often, for not as long, and have to wade through more crap to get anything useful. At a certain point – why bother? It’ll be there when you need it, but why waste time wading through ads.

It’s a fundamental tension of the current SNS model – the bait-and-switch, the demand to always monetize eyeball time. Like if those annoying beer reps were out at every bar you ever went to with your friends, and refused to leave you alone to talk to your buddies until you tried Tequiza Dry – again.

…and so, as users the only recourse we have is to deadbolt the doors or to move to another town (or other socialnetwork site in this case) and start again with a small group of acquaintances.

Separately…

A note on your analogy… We’re not homeowners – we’re tenants leasing space in someone else’s building.

“Think of it this way. A few years ago, Facebook was a city where no one felt the need to put locks on their front doors. Nowadays, we’ve got strangers, a police force that will kill us if we don’t use our “real names”, and surveillance bots that track us across the web and report what we do to our friends. Of course we’re going to deadbolt the house.”

We might deadbolt the apartment door, but the super still has a key and free rein through all our stuff.