Evolving the Social Network

arantius writes "An article on BottomQuark points to a new development: Here's a story about a new start-up Huminity, referred to as the technology of the year. The software they produce combines instant messaging, chat, and social networking. After burning through over $30k of personal funds, the team has now raised millions for their company. We've heard about Friendster recently, but somehow this seems more interesting." Jamie adds: Social networking was in the news recently because this patent apparently covers much of it. It was bought for $700K by the two underdogs and may be used to beat up on Friendster. Don't worry, the guy who wrote Slashdot's friend-of-friend code doesn't think we're affected :)

Comments

performance

[kaan]

If Huminity can beat the performance (or lack of it) for services like Friendster, I'd give it my vote. I think I have 14 people in my "friends" list on Friendster, and a Personal Network of nearly 400,000, and it is almost entirely impossible to do just about anything within the service. Sometimes, I can't even login without a browser timeout. Huminity might be able to do really well if they can get decent performance, or even just perceived performance through the use of caching tricks, saved data, etc.

Network of friends = useless?

[192939495969798999]

How does knowing whose friend is whose help me make friends? Really, it is just a complicated, expensive way of saying, "here are some people. Maybe you'll get along, maybe you won't, but your friend knows them."
In reality, if I don't have many friends, I won't have many friends of friends, and if I have a lot of friends, why would I need this service? Therefore, it will end up a network of 1:1 connections.

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

[ewhac]

This very same story was posted to Kuro5hin's queue about a week ago -- right down to the ridiculous "social networking has evolved" meme -- and voted down as a blatant advertising plug. Below is a copy of my post to the topic while it was still in the voting queue; it's still appropriate today:

From Huminity's site:

Contacts are notified by a one-time e-mail notification about their inclusion in the Huminity network. We see it as our obligation to notify contacts of their inclusion in the network and allow them at their own will to be delisted. Though this item is sometimes considered wrongly as SPAM by users and contacts, we think that it would be inconceivable NOT to notify contacts about their inclusion, even by their friends.

"It's inconceivable to us that people wouldn't want to know about our valuable service!" How very self-serving. Couple this with the fact that:

• You have to download a custom application whose behavior and security implications are unknown, and,
• You must provide contact data for five people before you're allowed to browse the network.

And you begin to see why I'm seriously disinterested in trying it out.

When evaluating services like this, I want to see who's already there. I want to do this without calling attention to myself or anyone else. If I like what I see, then I'll participate further -- fill out a profile, hook up to already-registered friends, tell other people about it, etc. Forcing me to offer up five contacts as tribute violates this principle.

Friendster gets this part right: You can participate as much or as little as you want, and Friendster contacts your unregistered friends only when you explicitly direct it to. In this respect, Friendster operates as a service, whereas Huminity has the patina of yet another email harvesting operation, in the same light as those someone-has-a-crush-on-you sites.

No sale, guys.

Schwab

Re:Prior art?

[jamiefaye]

Drug dealing has followed this protocol ever since the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914. The diference is that the database is decentralized and either committed to human memory or stored in an encrypted form.

Basically, to form a new hookup you must be introduced to a dealer by someone whom the dealer already trusts. The edges of the networks are called "runners", and can be found on streetcorners and in dance clubs. Retail and wholesale distribution follows a similar pattern.

When the protocol breaks down, particularly due to personnel security issues, bullets fly. Otherwise it works pretty well!

Competition with Huminity

[ChozCunningham]

For context here's a few thingies that offer that friend-network action: Friendster
No download, runs anywhere. Kinda simplistic, users stop logging in.

Tribe
No download, runs anywhere. More nerdy, uemphasis on freedom of use, discussion groups. Supports lots of pictures.

MySpace
No download, runs anywhere. Supports restricted blogs, popularity contests, 10 pics. Does not emphasize actual RL friendship dynamics.

Friend of a Friend
Open standard for creting friendster-like network apps. Used by PeepAgg to build OSS system.

There are more, and I'd love to see replies with links to this rapidly growing class of services/apps, with brief descriptions attached. Thanks