ICQ Universe

scubacuda writes "PC World: ICQ Universe (now owned by AOL) will soon be the first to offer social networking services on an IM platform. One has to wonder what types of legal issues might surface as social networks (particularly those unsecured) become more popular. For example, could being an IM buddy with someone later come back and haunt you?"

Comments

Prediction about "social network software"

[heironymouscoward]

This round is a fad.

It will last about 2-3 years and then disappear as people realize that the software does not support the true exchanges that keep human social networks running.

And in 5-10 years someone will build social networking software that really works. Some clues: men and women build different kinds of social networks. Younger and older people build different kinds of network. Information has value. People trade information. Social networks are information economies.

Re:Prediction about "social network software"

[DavidDeLux]

The thing that has made IM so popular is not that it tries to facilitate the true exchange of human social networks, but instead it tries to support it.

Exactly. IM should be seen as a way to support communication between people who know each other, rather than being a way to start the communication between unknown people. For many years, I avoided things like IM because it just seemed to be full of kiddies with nothing more to say that A/S/L ;-) But recently, because people I work with are all around the world, we use IM to stay in touch with each other - much to the regret of my local telco who have seen my internation phone calls drop to almost nothing :) Of course, there is a big difference between using IM between a closed group of contacts and IM between the unwashed masses (which is more what IRC is all about)

Re:Prediction about "social network software"

[abiggerhammer]

I don't really get the cachet of signing on to Yet Another Social Networking Site. The proliferation of SNS's in the last twelve months reminds me of the proliferation of instant messaging services after ICQ came out -- and until clients like Trillian and services like Jabber emerged, it was a huge pain in the ass to manage IM accounts on every service out there. (Perhaps someone will develop an SNS portal so that people can manage their Orkut/Friendster/Tribe.net/LinkedIn/etc. accounts all in one place?)

If the point of a social networking site is merely Yet More Networking, then the point escapes me. That said, it would be interesting to see social-networking sites with really useful added value, perhaps in a niche-specific fashion. For example, the biotech firm I work for is developing a site where users can data-mine article databases like PubMed more deeply than existing tools allow; they'll have the option to save the document classification schemes they build, and to share their classifiers with other users if they want. Social networking (or academic networking, if you will) is a natural extension of this -- if it helps people find collaborators as well as information, we'll consider it a success.

Re:Prediction about "social network software"

[SurgeonGeneral]

A person can only intake so much information. Desensitization will play a factor in people caring less about other's raw data. Maybe it will help us look at each other in a different light: what has this person accomplished with their life and who has this person helped or hurt?

I am going to have to go ahead and agreed with you on this.

In psychology we call this "habitutation". There are a lot of things that enter our mind, especially due to the senses alone. Think about all the stuff you could actually be hearing and seeing right now. Instead you've turned off your hearing and are focusing on the computer screen. Focus out for a second and you might suddenly pick up the whine of your computer fan or the drone of some far away television.

The social atmosphere changes with the forces that influence it, and filters out parts that are inconvenient or too powerful to notice. World War One brought on a sweeping change in the way the people think about themselves. People started talking about themselves in terms of form instead of content. Concepts of honor and chilvary made way for personality and style. But great changes in mass psychology are not merely stories in history books. Its not hard to notice that the internet makes information the paramount variable - thats why they call it the information economy. Without content, you have nothing. Thats a lesson the dot-bomb bubble taught us. and this focus on information permeates the way we interact with each other: look at Douglas Rushkoff's idea of information as social currency - he says that information is presupposed in our interactions and those that can offer it have power (not in those words). Information is power. Information dominates our thinking, our interactions, our business, our media, our newspapers, our politics. Its a good thing, because the more we come to realize how important it is, the more we will value it, and the more we will reject those that make false promises and empty threats.

The Internet becomes more like the real world...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess all these "social networks" make the internet more and more like the real world. Have to be careful of who you talk to, etc.

Except of course in the real work scamming someone is a lot more work - on the internet they can't see you, so you could be scamming lots of people at once. The "social networks" might even build up a higher layer of false trust.

Damn you internet!

Simply chatting with someone can be a problem.

[JanusFury]

A few years back, during the eFront Fiasco, someone got a hold of ICQ Chat Logs off of the machine of Sam Jain, the CEO of eFront. I was an administrator of one of the sites that got hit hard by the scandal, and if my memory serves the chat logs (which included a lot of very embarassing things being said by Sam and other higher-ups at eFront) were one of the big things that resulted in eFront's eventual destruction.

I can only imagine how much worse it will get when ICQ expands its services.

what a nonsense...

[selderrr]

could being an IM buddy with someone later come back and haunt you?

Could my 1 year old son being a friend with someone in day care come ack later and haunt him ?

Puhlease ! What a FUD. Are you trying to even further associalize those who are socioophobes but found AIM a useful tool to make friends ? Stop being so afraid of life !

Chatting can indeed be dangerous!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work on AOL as a Guide. One time there was a Guide they suspected was into kiddie porn. So, Not only did they (Law Enforcement) read all of his email for awhile, they also read email of all the people he talked to. Basically they were on a Fishing Expedition. They thought this guy was doing kiddie porn so of course they figured everyone else he talked to must be doing kiddie porn too!

I still remember, the day I opened my mail box (real one) and there was an envelope, from the Virgina Dept of Justice, telling me, hey guess what, we've been spying on your email for a few months while we investigated someone else. Hope you don't mind!!

And this was 6 or 8 years ago! God knows what they can do now, with carnivore and more powerful computers.

Re:Chatting can indeed be dangerous!!!

[saturng]

The fact that all of you are confusing AIM and ICQ is exactly where your paranoid trouble lies - those are different netwroks (still, how stupid) and as long as they are, they cater different people - the close minded, the I-need-my-fix-of-the-6-oclock-news, the Id-rather-live-in-fear-than-talk-to-someone-outsid e-of-north-america crowd of AIM, and those who actually still want to think of the world as a big place full of surprises, a world wide web indeed of ICQ users. And yes, the big bad world has porn (which can be easily blocked), and not so nice people (which can be ignored), and yeah, if you're stupid enough to talk about your boss on your work computer (or porn or anything else workplaces dont appreciate) then you have it coming. and u know what? Not chatting can be dangerous too. try the universe, you may just like it

Re:The Internet becomes more like the real world..

[filekutter]

I finally joined one of the 'networks' because of a recommendation from a friend, and was a bit non-plussed by the amount of personal information I was immediately asked to provide (by choice fortunately). A wonderful database for people to phish to say the least, and I saw absolutely NO warnings about possible abuses by unknown parties. I also must admit that the program and the idea of 'networking' with a bunch of people I don't know doesn't really appeal to me, and it will probably become a dusty link.

Livejournal is my social network

[samael]

I have friends all over the place who I keep up with via LJ. Sure, I also use email and MSN/ICQ/AIM to chat. But when I want to find out what they've been up to, I check my friends list.

LJ supports RSS, FOAF and is intrinsically interconnected. To my mind it's much more of a social network than anything else I've used.

Re:How is this different?

[Trejkaz]

The only difference is currently you can't see your friend's friends list. For ICQ to implement a social networking app, they would need to permit this, but you're right, it's really just showing the same information.