I came across a very interesting entry at Bill Burnham’s blog, Burnham’s Beat. Burnham is a venture capitalist and, from what I’ve read so far, provides a great perspective on many different topics. I was caught by his latest entry, “Social Networking: Partying Like It’s 1999″. Bill makes a number of well-stated arguments as to why investment, both from a personal and business case, in SNS is a thorny matter to say the least. One of the main points is that without a specific application for these systems, the weight of consumer discontent and industry heavy-weights could be enough to collapse the entire business. As he notes:

In many ways it is these “applications” that solve many of the inherent problems with social networks. Not only do they initiate the creation of social networks but they force constant interactions which provide a natural mechanism for updating and maintaining these networks. Thus, in order for online social networks to be successful, our analog experience suggests that they must be by-products of applications that provide both an impetus for the creation of the network and a mechanism for constantly updating that network.

The problem for pure-play online social networking companies is that they lack applications. In fact, many companies, such as Friendster or Orkut, seem to have no stated purpose beyond the network itself. These companies would likely maintain that “the network is the application” (in other words, that the socializing facilitated by the network is the application) and therefore they don’t have a problem, but let them fool you, they do. As pointed out earlier, social networking is inherently an intermittent and dynamic activity. Without some kind of application to force the regular use and maintenance of such networks, pure play online social networks are destined to become as stale and appealing as two week old bread.

Source: Burnham’s Beat, “Social Networking: Partying Like It’s 1999″

By applicaitons, I should clarify that he is not particularly referring to the software variation, but more usage scenarios that establish and feed the networks themselves. Bill’s point, as I’ve noted in the past, is that the more work required of the user to maintain the network, the quicker the benefits deteriorate.

It seems like only hours ago that I was commenting on why size should not be the primary factor for evaluating a “successful” SNS, when someone sends me a link to this Wall Street Journal article. Apparently, ICQ is now entering the fray:

America Online Inc.’s ICQ plans to launch a social-networking service Thursday, joining two other big online companies tiptoeing into the space over the last week, InterActiveCorp and Lycos Inc. Others say they are watching the area, which is known for start-ups like Friendster Inc. and Tickle Inc.

ICQ (”I Seek You”) sees its offering as mapping out its community of tens of million of registered users, many of whom are outside the U.S. The service hopes its ability to integrate instant messaging into social networking, its experience running a community and its large number of users will help the new service, called ICQ Universe, become a leader among social networking sites. Parent America Online is a unit of Time Warner Inc., of New York.

“When I look at other networking sites that are out there, in almost every way we have an advantage,” said Orey Gilliam, general manager of ICQ. “I think it’s a natural evolution for our service.”

[…]

ICQ sees its ICQ Universe having a much bigger audience — as well as creating larger opportunities for people to meet others — than existing sites. Those able to participate go beyond the more than 175 million registered and eight million daily active users ICQ claims. AOL’s AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ have been interoperable since this summer, so ICQ users can also invite AIM users to join. ICQ said AIM users will also eventually be able to log in with their screen names.

At ICQ Universe, which has been in beta for three weeks, users can create profiles of themselves, write testimonials for their friends, view and message members as well see their relationships to others on the site.

Source: Wall Street Journal, “America Online’s ICQ Plans Social-Networking Service”

So the math goes something like: I’ve already got millions and millions of users signed up, I’ll throw on some more profile data, a little network visualization, and I’ll have the best SNS known to humankind. Why does it make sense to some people that being put in a room with 150 million people is somehow a useful thing? ICQ has had for years a service that allowed you to connect to new people (I disabled mine from Day 1).

This reminds me of the Love.com project that was bootstrapped onto AIM some months back. I still haven’t heard anything about the relative success or failure of that venture yet, but I’m sure that it will be successful if not by shear brute force.

The only thing still true, though, is that no one really knows what’s going to happen.

I came across WiredJournal today — “A group blog on markets and technology”. It seems today was the first official day for the blog, but I already like some of the thoughts mentioned. Continuing the discussion on SNS Game Theory, WiredJournal comments:

I understand that amassing a large user-base is part of the equation towards realizing a business model but going about it this way turns social networking into more of a collecting game and misses out on the real value proposition. They make it far too easy to click-and-link to new members and publicizing everyone’s score card turns it into a competition. What these sites really offer is a souped-up, always-on, virtual networking event where the barriers to making first-contact may have been lowered a bit but there is still a lot of noise to deal with and filter out. A true social network is very *individual* and you cannot really join one. You have to build yours from the ground up - one relationship at a time.

[…]

At the heart, many of these services suffer from the same thing: Trying to focus too soon on fostering new relationship discovery instead of focussing on strengthening existing relationships. I am a big believer in the latent “strength of weak ties” but you cannot have effective weak ties without cultivating a few strong ties first. Cultivating strong relationships is more than just search - It is about facilitating conversations. A large connected network (critical mass) is the ultimate end goal but every network has a natural tipping point - one that cannot be artificially realized. Duncan Watts describes this in his book: “Six Degrees” as a phase transition where a network transitions rapidly from a disconnected state to a connected one at the critical point.

Source: WiredJournal, “Social Networking: Does size matter?”

The current crop of SNS surely has spawned a new stratum in the social spectrum with terms like Friendster creeping into our vocabulary as a relationship level. I firmly believe that there does need to be a focus on the relationships closest to home and work your way outwards. As I designed the SparkCard system, I focused on the importance of interaction and the role of chemistry in making relationships evolve. I only hope that when it’s time to show people how their networks can grow organically that they won’t be disappointed that the growth is not viral (read exponential).

Last thing, for anyone that hasn’t read Watt’s “Six Degree: The Science of a Connected Age”, I would recommend it as well.

Yesterday, I commented on the analogy of SNS and Gaming. The thread was spawned by an article over at Many 2 Many. In the comments I came across an interesting trackback to a well-written analysis of how SNS can be viewed as a game and why it generally fails to represent anything (written back in January) by lago.

lago raises many good points, but the one that sticks most to me is that all networks fall down because they attempt to represent an organic thing. The basic idea being that whatever representation we are looking at is, in short, wrong, since everyone involved has already moved on, evolved, dissolved, or otherwise transformed. As he states:

If you can visualize it in a static diagram, it’s not a live social network. Static visualization is at best a representation of a particular relationship at a particular time. Social networks, the real deal, are highly fluid, based on shifting foundations, and impossible to reproduce at any level lower than themselves.

Which is to say that the idea of creating a social network using software, or mapping existing networks with software, appeals to specific desires of specific people, and that brings up the second point. Social network software at its finest can only serve two purposes: facilitating the creation of artificial networks for people who don’t have real ones; and facilitating the artificial visualization of networks for people who have real ones. In other words, if you don’t have a meaningful social network, these tools help you pretend to have one, or to build one within highly bounded dimensions. On the other hand, if you have a meaningful social network, these tools serve as a sort of game where you can build fake identities, compete over the number of friends, or assemble raw data for research purposes. You don’t build networks; you play the network game.

Source: lago, “Social Networks and Network Games”

The two defining characteristics, from lago’s point of view, of an actual social network are that it cannot be compressible and that it would not be user-maintained. The notion of a self-organizing software mirror of the social network is very intriguing to say the least. The notion of compression carries back to the static visualization, wax museums, and other criticisms we’ve seen about these networks. Systems are already in place that are starting to become more autonomous, providing that automatic-user requirement. The question this raises though, however, is this: If software could mimic, and potentially predict the growth and interaction, in its entirety of a real social network, why do we need the nodes at all? It seems that the snapshots provide a context for evaluation that, despite the obvious limitations, can be leveraged.

Are we seeing the trees or the forest?

A very interesting topic has been raised over at Many 2 Many wondering if SNS software is not actually more consistent with the qualities of a traditional “game”. As AJ Kim notes:

Earning points (in one form or another) and asociating levels with earned points is a common and powerful game mechanic that taps into basic human nature. When you earn points for in-game actions, you gain a sense of progress and accomplishment — which motivates you to keep playing. And when you’re rewarded for your persistence with a new ‘level’ that offers greater status, powers and challenges, that compounds the motivational power of the mechanism.

This basic idea has wide application beyond games. For example, Frequent Flyer programs allow customers to earn points via economic transactions, and award loyal, active customers with special status and privileges when they reach certain levels. Anytime you have the means to track and assign value to social or economic transactions within a system, you have the opportunity to introduce a mechanism for earning points and assigning levels.

[…]

The drive to accumulate points and track accomplishments is so powerful that people will often’make up’ a game when one doesn’t explicity exist. For example, social networks show you the number of friends you have, and the number of connections you’ve ‘earned’ by having those friends. This simple feedback mechanism encourages some people to think of a social network as a ‘game’ with the goal of ‘collect the most friends with the greatest number of connections.’

Many 2 Many, “Are social networks a collecting game?”

I would have to wholeheartedly agree with these statements. I would perhaps go a little further and suggest that the value is not simply in the ability to collect “points and levels”, but also the ability leverage that in any number of methods: sold, bartered or traded as commodities (EBay, Craigslist, etc.), influence over opinion and action, or wielded as a badge of honor to earn acceptance to gated communities. This last point is, I think, the most interesteing, as it uses the point system as an activity meter as well as a network monitor.

There’s been much talk lately about Orkut, especially with the latest news of its untimely demise. Amidst all this discussion, however, some individuals have raised some interesting have been some interesting points about Orkut, and SNS in general.

Tom makes note:

Still have not had time to enter the world of Flickr, and rarely visit Orkut. One thing, though, about the Orkut type of social software is, it bears no resemblance to anything I conceive of as social.

I.e., simply on a very naive level, I do not tend to think of people I know as frozen in time, forever repeating the same tired information about books, movies, tv shows, and such.

Would it not be a tad more “life-like” to make, say, a blog or something of the sort the home page for these social network thingies?

Source: commonplaces

Rebecca Blood does an excellent topology tour of the social model of Orkut and provides a list of insight into what could help to make it better. Her list includes:

1. Change the user agreement
2. Allow a graduated acquaintance scale
3. Let anyone be a fan
4. Stop promoting popularity contests
5. Allow me to delete birthday reminders
6. Give users something to do with “Friends of a Friends” besides spamming each other
7. Add “Want” and “Have” categories to user profiles and find a way to search and match them among users
8. Make all aspects of Orkut more configurable
9. Allow users to designate more than one industry on their professional profile
10. Prompt users to add keywords to Communities as they create them
11. On my home page, show which of my Communities have been updated
12. Improve your page-to-page navigation
13. Make “My Network” useful

These thirteen changes alone won’t make Orkut the ultimate in social networking. But they will make the service more useful and give it a good base for further innovation. With its integrated personal, social, and business functions, Orkut has an opportunity to outstrip it competitors—but only if its creators make smart choices that support the genuine needs of real people.

Source: Rebecca Blood, “13 Ways To Save Orkut”

danah boyd recently commented on a question she is often asked, “Which YASNS Is Best?”:

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.

Source: apophenia, “Which YASNS Is Best?”

I think the lesson to be learned from all of these examples is that flexibility cannot be sacrificed for indexability. Our SNS needs to mimic our lives more closely for it to be useful.

In a very surprising turn of events, the Orkut Machine has been exposed and the wizard exposed:

Orkut.com, a popular social networking Website which has attracted the attention of the some of the Internet’s biggest names, was revealed today by its creators to be an elaborate “reality Internet” project to form the basis of a master’s thesis.

“We figured we couldn’t keep it secret much longer anyway,” said Orkut Buyukkokten, after whom the distinctive blue-colored meet-and-match site was named. “I didn’t think we could do it this long in the first place, actually.”

Source: Todd Boyle via Many 2 Many

As Orkut seems to expect, a great deal of attrition is expected as a result of everyone joining the “Circe De Orkut” under false pretenses I am very interested in finding out why people would leave, in reality. It seems that many people were quite fond of the service and saw potential in it — I’d assume Google did as well though they might not launch the “real” service just yet (wait for the backlash to end). I’m sort of curious if, now understanding the Terms of Service better, this news might not almost be an inducement to enter the fray since there’s “less” to worry about.

Of course, on the other hand, as Orkut notes, the servers are paid up till “the end of March” but if I was holding Orkut social stock, I’d say that ship was about to tank BIG TIME

Good thing I didn’t know anyone to invite me to the inaugural sailing of the Titanic Orkut ;)

UPDATE:Thanks to Andy for pointing out to me that I have been hact. This seems to be a prank that was circulating.. So yes, there is Orkut on my face ;) Damned this Internet thing.

I was reading up over at danah boyd’s blog and came upon an interesting post titled “why i don’t build (right now)“. In it, danah talks about a common questions she gets regarding social software: “if you’re so smart, why don’t you do it?”. Interestingly, danah makes a very interesting observation about the differences between the academic and business worlds:

Fast moving and highly complex spaces likes YASNS and social software require iteration. No one project is going to completely “get it.” Lessons will be learned, features stabilized across different applications. I certainly have ideas for the next iteration, but to develop them means to stop paying attention to the larger picture and work on just building that next level.

Source: apophenia

Between danah’s thoughts and the commentary, a number of different ideas emerged from the discussion.

Subject Boards and Missing Protocol

In the academic domain, testing on human subjects is quite guarded and is supervised by a Human Subjects Board. Ironically enough, commercial ventures are not subject to these contstraints. Undoubtedly, this is tied to the highly opt-in nature of commerce where sign-up/membership/trial equals consent in the highest, and often hidden, ways. I’m not sure regulation here is a requirement, but the contrast is certainly interesting.

Geek to Geek

An unfortuante side-effect of “networking” software, but all software in general, is that geeks are speaking to other geeks too often than not. Currently, the tools available to the average user are not ready for public consumption. While your average geek or technophile is concerned with web standards, an ever-growing list of acronyms, and utilities and services that foster the generation and connections between those entites, the average end user could care less and is immune from the majority of the impact “doing it right versus wrong” will have in the long run. I’ve commented (1, 2, 3) on aspects of this before, one commentator made this assessment:

My biggest complaint at the moment is that in most domains we’re still building tools for geeks. Most of these YASNS systems are no exception, neither are most of the tools surrounding the blogging world.

The simplest problem to solve is naming. We’re all cute with our RSSs and FOAFs and blogosphere’s, but these are geek terms for geeks. I’m not talking about dumbing things down, I’m talking about perspective and accessability.

Source: John Poisson comment

Academic versus Business Needs

I’ve just touched on the beginnings of this topic above. It’s clear, however, that there are two driving motives which unfortunately must butt heads from time to time. Academia pursues discovery, knowledge and understanding as some of its primary goals with the intent of furthering and clarifying our current and future understanding. Business on the other hand is about leverage — converting knowledge into assets that can be utilized by an audience. Naturally, a large part of academia is bent that business is the root of all evil and betrays us on many levels. Luckily not all are short-sighted and most realize the symbiotic nature of the two camps. danah makes an excellent comment:

Don’t get me wrong - i LOVE folks who build stuff and i also realize that not all business is about corrupting people. But once software is built, one often has to choose between what is best for people and what is economically viable. There’s a different decision making process. And i agree that it is the business world that lets folks get out of building tools for other fellow geeks.

Source: zephoria comment

Personally, I think I am fairly balanced in my motives. I surely am a business person focused on creating that leverage, but the academic in me keeps me true to the human cause.

I haven’t gotten my letter yet, but someone else sent me theirs:

Dear _________:

In the next few weeks, we will be introducing changes to the system to improve site performance. If all goes according to plan, Friendster will be faster, the system will scale with the growth of the community, and you will have more choices for setting your privacy levels on Friendster.

At the bottom of this page, you must make two selections. You must select the level of exposure for your profile, and you must select the level for exchanging messages between you and other Friendsters.

These settings will be saved for you until the site improvements are introduced. However, you may change these privacy levels at any time through the Account Settings area of your Home Page. If you do not select these levels, the system will automatically default both settings to your third degree of friends (friends of friends of friends).

We hope that you are as excited about the improvements as we are. If you would like more information, please visit Help.

Thanks to everyone who has shared their feedback with us on these important issues.

Friendster

Seems some of this Privacy banter has finally made it up the food chain. I’m not sure that’s really enough for me, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

I knew this was going to happen. There have been rumblings for some time now that SNS 2.0 needs to move to the desktop and connect via P2P services. Stowe Boyd reports (with a screenshot) of a new service launched by WiredReach, Dallas-based startup that has released a very interesting new Social Networking application.

WiredReach offers a decentralized service and ensures that the owner’s identity is secure from start to finish. I COMPLETELY agree with this stance and think it’s great to see a system that implements it at this stage of the game. And don’t think this is vaporware, it seems the fellows there have been working on this since 2002 so I’m going to assume they’ve thought long and hard on the related issues.

As their site notes:

The vision of WiredReach is simple: “To connect people and keep them connected through a trusted referral network”. WiredReach is a general purpose networking tool that leverages the Internet to increase the network reach of individuals across different personal and business contexts without compromising user privacy and security. One of the challenges for effective networking is locating the right person in a given context. The other is keeping your most valuable contacts always up to date and within easy reach. WiredReach makes both of these a snap.

Source: WiredReach Product Page

Although I have many questions about the WiredReach service and, more generally, about the completeness of a pure P2P system, I want to reserve judgment until I’ve hopefully had a chance to experience it on my own. I will share a small snippet from my thoughts on “Personal Content Management” for consideration in this context:

When it comes to managing one’s own personal content, there are several simple truths that cannot be violated:

• Universal - it’s got to store everything, regardless of how free-form it is
• Unlimited - it’s got to store anything regardless of how big it is
• Uninterruptible - it’s got to be available all the time, any time, from anywhere
• Unbreakable - it’s got to be secure