This past weekend, I was in Los Angeles to attend the wonderful HASTAC conference. Highlights included Howard Rheingold’s keynote, Curtis Wong’s discussion of the World Wide Telescope, and Bill Tomlinson’s demo on human-mediated networking. I was asked to join a panel entitled Trends in TechnoTravels/TeleMobility, so I thought I’d share what I spoke about here – a talk entitled Imagined Identity: Envisioning the Future of Social Networks.
The talks on the panel were short, so rather than presenting research I mined Unit Structures to talk about some emergent themes I’m observing in social networks. Readers of my blog may recognize these themes: Closeness, Curation and Imagined Identity. A lot my thinking is influenced by sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Muxtape and even ClaimID – sites where people are being social in smaller, more focused ways. Here’s the quick explanation, with links to reference posts with longer explanation:
Closeness: I see closeness in social network sites as a function of smaller friend networks and more personalized content. With more focused networks, the contextual challenges that lead to self-censorship are diminished. Compared to a site where one has hundreds of friends, including the boss, family members and friends, in a close site one knows their audience and engages them personally. Examples: Twitter, LiveJournal, Tumblr.
Curation: Curation emerges in sites built around social objects. Unlike Friendfeed, which is a decontextualized mess of everything a person creates, a curation-oriented site focuses on limited, curated content. Our identity wants to be faceted, and curation-oriented sites allow us to best present certain parts of our persona. Examples: Muxtape, Flickr, Vimeo.
Imagined Identity: Some sites are moving away from first-generation social network profile, one in which your identity is explicitly enumerated. Next-gen sites induce identity in more nuanced fashions. In Twitter, your bio is limited to 140 characters, meaning your “profile” or “identity” in more a function of your production. This is engaging, as the identity you produce naturally winds and changes as you “update” your profile by sending messages. Certainly more interesting that listing your favorite movies and changing them every six months. Examples: Twitter, Seesmic.
I was also asked to think about mobile social networks. I’ve been notoriously down on MoSoNet (or whatever it’s called) because so much of the technology requires freshening of handsets. If we have to wait for the whole world to get iPhones or Boost mobile devices, and then we have to get those devices to work together on proprietary networks, then we’re going to be waiting forever.
Thinking about these themes – Closeness, Curation and Imagined Identity – I see a push back against the ideology of bigger, better, faster. Perhaps mobile networks that leverage these simple themes may be able to construct meaningful social networks across devices, with simple tools and techniques. There’s still a lot standing in the way of mobile networks, including cost and carrier interoperability, but perhaps this simpler approach may be beneficial.
There are a number of caveats attached to these themes. They are inherently emergent, meaning we’re not going to see the social networks market change to them overnight (or anytime soon). They also don’t reward the “biggest” networks, instead concentrating on smaller clusters. This is clearly in opposition to the goals of large players like Google, Myspace or Facebook. Perhaps these tools enable the long tail of social networks, which I think is an interesting possibility. We always though niche social networks would be the long tail of social networking. While niche networks will certainly represent a part of the tail, perhaps it is close networks, with inherent small-group personalization, that offer us a way forward.
Tags: conference, HASTAC, twitter
I’m not sure if this is what you are thinking in terms of “closeness” but Twitter to me has been a revelation in being local. Organically the majority of folks I am communicating with on Twitter live within a 20 mile radius of me… or have some connection to that area. Further, my connectivity to my local area has grown because of this. I know I’ve mentioned this to you before – but it still surprises me as no other participation in online communities has accomplished that for me.
David,
That’s a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about. The idea that your network is comprised of people you know, who are close – and knowing that your online production is supplementing your relationships with them. It is very powerful.
I think that social networks need to have both in order to scale. Both the local and the global. But the local is the most important to me as well – as well as the social objects present
There are now thousands of social networks that cater to a whole variety of subjects. These smaller, focused sites allow users to connect with like-minded people and give advertisers targeted demographics. Niche social networks are also good for marketers who have a product or service they want to promote that relates to a particular interest. A good place to find such sites is a search engine that caters specifically to social networks such as http://findasocialnetwork.com
As always, thank you for the labeling: it comes handy for a discussion we are having right now — precisely to figure out how a Mobile network could work.
There are tons of things that could be implemented (thanks to geo-loc, mostly) in a MoSoNet, but Twitter or the mobile end of Facebook seem convincing to me. I really beleive that efficient, mature social networks demand complex personal structures, and need a large screen for settings — hence the success of two ideas that are not purely mobile.
I was surprised to see how few Twitter accounts are private, probably meaning most people use it as a micro-bloging platform rather then an “close” network. I sincerly beleive that with a less intrusive end then SMS, a Twitter-like app can be a great socail app.
Numerically I have a very small sphere of influence myself. The usual family and friends and a few like-mindeds. But they are spread out all over the world.
I am about to become a grey nomad myself and I imagine social net- working will become essential to me rather than just necessary.
For “on the hoof” interconnectivity one has to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the layers of systems and its bloody complex.
What I am trying to say is organic growth is hidebound by technical complexity, not by human behaviour.
Just a point of clarification — why aren’t social objects in FriendFeed simply recontextualized in a stream of “actions” that your friends have taken? I agree, and originally opposed, the commenting-out-of-context aspect of FriendFeed, but now appreciate it considerably, like going to an art museum and commenting out loud, in the context of others, and having people I don’t know respond to whatever I say…
Isn’t that also somewhat valid? To create “third” contexts for these social objects?
Certainly – the core value of “remix culture” seems to be creating third spaces. Trebor Scholz and other critics would argue, and I would agree, that these third spaces advance capitalistic agendas – vendors are certainly interested in leveraging api’s and streams and repurposing them into their own places. And in many contexts, those can be a value-add. For example, we’d much rather follow our Facebook friends via Newsfeed than browse everyone’s profile every day. Same thing with my Flickr contact network, and so on.
My personal argument is against the automaticitiy of the spaces. Whereas a curated space emphasizes the select content of a curator, the firehose approach is technological – it lacks the human intervention and editing process that allows selective presentation. All of this, obviously, can be controlled in software, and if FriendFeed does catch on I assume norms will emerge, but I don’t see a solution yet. Nor do I see anything innovating or particularly time-saving about the approach.