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Social Networking in the Digital Age
An anonymous reader writes "It used to be if you wanted to win more friends, influence more people or make more money, you bought one of those self-improvement tomes and tried to pump up your personality.
These days, all you have to do is go online and join a "social networking" site. The pumping will be done for you."
What? No orkut link, but an MSN link instead? On Slashdot? Did hell freeze over or something? :)
I always used to look in the mirror and say "...because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dogonnit, people like me!"
01000001 01011001 01000010 01000001 01000010 01010100 01010101
Ummm... Social networking? Pumping? Joining a site? Making money? Am I the only one thinking about pr0n here?
Yeah, but even then personality has to count for something. If you're a pill, it's going to show through.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
From the article: If you haven't yet heard of social networking, stay tuned because it's the Next Big Thing.
Really? Every time some site (MSN, in this case) or article tells you that such-and-such is the "Next Big Thing," ask yourself what they might have to gain...
Just terminated my Orkut account : I don't like to be asked to quantify my level of friendship with people, it is only my business.
I'd rather keep meeting people IRL, there are still much more people offline than online, after all.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Friendster and others seem to be falling into the same traps as Carnagie Courses and all those self-help books... They all promise so much and yet the means to do any of these things can be found inside one's own mind. Just take a bit more interesting thoughts put into a few words and a few fears excorcised, and you have a much more interesting person who others want to be friends with. This seems like the Diet Industry, where eat less and excercise more is the actual reality that everyone will pay $$$ to avoid!
I'm looking for work. Does that mean my social net, Slashdot, will come to my rescue?
But an online social circle is a poor substitute for a real social network. I've been there, done that, and sure I see the appeal. But honestly, get some real ('f2f' as they say) friends.
no comment
Orkut has pics of hot geek chicks. What more excuse do you need?
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Really, isn't what those sites are for?
If you want to see the social network idea extended to music, I suggest you check out my site Musicmobs. It links users together not only by the music they listen to, but also creating a web of "favorite users".
My goal is to make a place where people can not only find new music, but learn more about the music that they already listen to.
I've considered joining such online social circles in the past because I, like many others, do enjoy online interaction. I spend many hours per day talking to people on AIM or some other service, I maintain a livejournal, and as I'm doing right now, I enjoy posting on sites like Slashdot. However, I've yet to actually do it. Why? Because the people I would really be interested in having join along with me are already on AIM, or they simply aren't online very often.
Existing chat services already serve this purpose quite well. I have a number of contacts on my lists which I personally don't know very well, but they are friends of friends who I might talk to once a year. The only real difference with these sites is that the process is automated, in some sense or another. I can see the purpose to them and I would like to see a concept like this take off, but I just can't see anything like that really getting established and lasting any length of time.
KappaStone
> The pumping will be done for you.
That hasn't been my experience. I signed up for the Monster.com networking thing, and all it does is send me periodic messages stating "other people who are like you". What am I supposed to do with this?
Crap. I get far more kudos from people e-mailing me to ask about or compliment source code and articles I post on my web site, and often times they contribute code back to me.
1. Many still prefer human face to face (or any other body part to any other body part
2. Identity theft. You can register yourself as Bill Gates, with BG's photo, on Friendster. Chances are, you'll get away with it.
3. Abuse by trolls. Need I say more?
I keep my personal life well off the internet. I do it mainly for privacy and security reasons.
Friendster, in my eyes, is a vast spam engine. I get dozens of emails from people I barely know as acquiantances trying to be my "friends" on Friendster. No thanks. I know who my friends are. I don't want a website to remind me.
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Nothing to see here
Most "online" people like the anonominity of the online world, so that can be someone, or something that they aren't in real life. That is what makes IRC, Chat, ... so "interesting" to most individuals.
Computers and software will never replace real world "networking" and friendships, as a lot of that is built on your real personality, and (like it or not) appearance.
And this is why, at 35, you are still a virgin.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This is the best overblown, over reaching hyperbole since the Silicon Valley venture vultures were leading us willingly down the yellow brick road. This is a bunch of hype by new players trying to convince us their new products are SO much better at creating social networks than the BBS, slashblogs, and USENET that's been building social networks forever. This is a virtual velvet rope that creates the artificial scarcity that makes an exclusive club seem so much more exclusive than it really is.
But what do you do if your friends aren't interested in joining one of these sites - or you don't have any friends? If you don't have connections, you don't get to play. That's hardly a way for an introvert to better their social standing.
I could kill you, sure, but I could only make you cry with these words
With my experiences on orkut, friendster(before they ran out of bandwidth), myspace, and such, LJ is not very social.
Being a "blogger" site, most of the people there post entries just to hear themselves talk. It gets very cliquey, and even though you might get added to someone's friends list, they might not be so open or receptive to your comments.
Hell, you could post a thought-provoking, insightful journal entry and recieve zero comments, while any 19 year old grrl who posts pics of her clevage gets 20 "you're so beautiful!" comments. Don't expect intelligent discussion on LJ like you would see on here or on kuro5hin. LJ is a bit socially xenophobic.
With myspace and friendster, the journalling functions are 99% ignored.
With orkut, I actually see some decent activity in the communities. It's much better structured than myspace or friendster. Now as for meeting new people, that's a different story.
Oh, and don't bother with the livejournal meetups. They are 100% sausage fests.
Just this week I met up with some people from Orkut. I wrote about my experience for those interested.
I know a lot of people on slashdot make fun of social networks, but trust me, if you are new to a city and don't know many people there, it's nice to join a network of (mostly) real people as opposed to some anonymous bulliten board.
-Colin
The fundamental law of social environments is that it takes effort to be well noticed, and online social networks certainly do not violate that principle. They just change the fitness landscape a bit by allowing those who aren't equipped with f2f social graces to compete.
But as it turns out, if you're a dork in real life, you're usually a dork online too. People that are popular in real life but not so much online generally just haven't invested the time required to build an online presence.
In other words, the same basic laws of social interaction apply, you just get to interact with more people.
I help run a website that has social networking aspects, Mediachest.com and have looked around at all the other social networking sites, and they don't really seem to offer much. They either try to replace existing communities with a site that has fewer features than the original or they are worthless, slow lists of people who are essentially strangers. Sure, it is nice if you want to look at profiles of girls without having to pay to contact them, but are any of the sites any more useful than that? Mediachest is more about finding new people and sharing items. It is like the distributed library project but centralized so it is easier to find things. Social networking can be very valuable when trying to find a DVD to watch or a book to borrow. Social networking can be more than just dating.
...and even though most of the postings are against the article, we are participating in an online community.
humble and proud of it.
Personally, I prefer Everclear.
Folks, a club anyone can join is a club no one will see value in joining. These networks exist so the unemployed can BS themselves to high heaven and link to other people with equally fictional self-appraisals. Once it becomes obvious how high the BS meter is on these sites, they will crash.
a "social" site without real time chat is not that social... that is why huminity is the more faverable site
With my experiences on orkut, friendster(before they ran out of bandwidth), myspace, and such, real life is not very social.
Being about life, most of the people just want to hear themselves talk. It gets very cliquey, and even though you might get added to someone's diary, they might not be so open or receptive to your comments.
Hell, you could say something thought-provoking, and insightful and no one listens, while any 19 year old grrl who flashes her cleavage gets 20 "you're so beautiful!" comments. Don't expect intelligent discussion in real life like you would see on here or on kuro5hin. Real life is a bit socially xenophobic.
With myspace and friendster, the journalling functions are 99% ignored.
With orkut, I actually see some decent activity in the communities. It's much better structured than myspace or friendster. Now as for meeting new people, that's a different story.
Oh, and don't bother with the real life meetups. They are 100% sausage fests.
All the fervor has skeptics talking of a social networking bubble and its inevitable collapse. While such speculation is premature, issues do have to be resolved -- functionality and privacy concerns among them -- before the sector can be judged a safe bet.
Ummm, no. the skeptics are skeptical because we heard all the same hoo haa back around 1999. And investment is not profit something these dot-commies still don't understand.
The article then goes on to blather:
Perhaps the strongest arguments for social networking's success has nothing to do with the bottom-line success of the companies behind the sites. Rather it's one of those unintended consequences that's no less welcome and needed for being unexpected.
First off, that is an atrociously written paragraph. What is IT'S? "Social networking" or the "bottom line success of the companies"? But, never mind...
Secondly, these companies are having millions of dollars poured down their gullet by VCs. That is NOT bottom line success. That is investment on the prediction of bottom line success, but we ALL know where that little train went back around March 2001...
The article is just another rah-rah bit of internet blather - so five minutes ago (actually five years ago) it's kind of sad, really.
The fact is this: if you want to build a network of professional relationships, you have to get off your fat ass and go meet people. There are many organisations for just about every concievable interest. Join one. You have to go out and meet people. And if you're a loser at that, then eventually you'll be a loser online as well, because all the online thing can do is facilitate the development of f2f where the real business goes down.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The dating networks are filled with fake pics.
The business networks are filled with people with inflated egos and phony credentials.
Sure its fun to surf them but they are useless for any valid application. Just surf LinkedIn sometime to see BS artists on steriods linking to each other in a circle jerk of mutual validation for their collective hagiography.
Slashdot was a social network site! I've even got friends here! :-)
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
While I see some great potential for these types of sites, I have to wonder about the strength or veracity of the social networks they claim to foster. For example, Orkut tells me I'm now "connected" to over 150,000 folks, even though I only have three "friends" added to my profile. Just because I joined to the Debian/Apache/PHP/EFF/Dachshund forums doesn't mean all the other members even know of my existence, or care.
Still though, it does do wonders for the ego . . .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Having to "rate" my friends could possibly be the worst concept to hit social networking.
I'm either friends, or not, with someone, and my own classification of my friendships change so often that updating (forget about revealing it to other folks) a website is just impossible.
I doubt that. I've seen plenty of boring Friendster profiles who I'd never contact the person behind, and I've de-Friendster-ated more than a couple of people who signed up and added me, but frankly just ended up not being interesting enough to bother. "Favorite color: OMG-Pink. Favorite Music: Britney Houston."
Thankfully, to keep it interesting we always have the Fakesters.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
efnet rulz! I have been an irc "regular" for well over a decade.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I have recently been trying out another social networking site -- ecademy.com. It started in the UK apparently, and is just now starting to get some USA folks on it.
I've been on Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn, and now Ecademy. One thing is for sure, there is no such thing as "if you've seen one you've seen them all". Every one of these sites has unique features and a unique atmosphere to it. LinkedIn is very polished and professional and formal. Ecademy is in many way the opposite -- people there will say hi just because they noticed you online, even though you have never met them. The openness of ecademy certainly makes it a lot friendlier.
All of these sites are tools that can be used or abused just like anything else.
Here is a quote from the MSN article: "By bringing a real-world relationship model online -- one where individuals are identified and held accountable -- social networking has the potential to make the Internet a healthier, more civil place. "
And there you have it, folks. That is what it is really all about. It's a false mechanism to strip the Internet of the ability to act and speak anonymously. What MSN and other VC dollars are pushing for, is a world where every TCP socket uses SSL, everything is digitially signed, where you can't even get ON the net until you are tied to a PKI infrastructure.
Social clubs like these create the natural response to the stories of 45 year old fat guys posing as teenage girls. It smashes a key attribute of the Internet that made it alluring for many. I'm not passing judgement on this, as good or bad, just pointing out that creating exclusionary groups and networking the "good" people is a predictable response. This is what gives University campuses the feeling of safety, esp. at Ivy League schools. The sense that everyone was "chosen" to be there.
What will happen to groups like Orkut that are founded from places like Stanford are they will come to reflect the population of Stanford. Alumnis will get pref treatment. Then what happens is a fragmentation of social networks, pretty soon you have social networks based on race, such as the Hispanic or Latino social network, and you get the Republican golf league social network, and pretty soon the system breaks down under the weight of 8 million social networks that are split up along cultural and economic lines, and there is no anonymity, and it just mirrors society, and while that may make it "accepted", it removes all the sense of wonder and finding new things that the net was about.
I join a web board for SimRacing (www.racesimcentral.com) because that is an activity that I enjoy. Because of people I've met there, I could attend the Goodwood festival in the UK even though I'm an American. And I may only know the people from their Nom De Plume, I may never know their real names. And it doesn't matter. I think social networks really exist to destroy things like that.
I would expect 80% of bloggers to realize no one is reading their mindless tripe by the end of this year. I mean, how many times can you read -
Really hard to get out of bed today, Lord of the Rings is so cool, This blog is important...
????????
That was, bar none, the most content-free article I've read this year.
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
I agree completely. I'm going to be switching careers in a few months and it'd be pretty damn helpful if I could find some friends of friends already on the inside, but it's clear to me that these networks are either secret or just for dating. So why hasn't anyone created one with validation? If VCs are giving out that kind of cash, one of us really should...
I have yet to find a social networking service that isn't just a bunch of crappy collaboration tools glued together in a dating site format.
Take Orkut communities. They're just low rent versions of web based message boards that have been around for quite a while now. There are communities for just about any subject already, but technology-wise they offer nothing that other online communication tools haven't been doing better for some time now. Ditto for most of the other features orkut has. Do we really need to reinvent email, message boards, IRC, and IM; badly?
Yeah, you can read someone's profile. But that's really more useful on a special purpose dating site. For most other purposes it's just not need to know information. Does the fact that you can't easily call up Linus's preferences in movies matter at all in the context of discussions about the Linux kernel? I don't think so.
I don't see the value added, quite the opposite in fact. Orkut interests me more as a playground for bots that game it's various ranking systems than anything that I would use to meet people and exchange information.
Nothing forcing you to make friends online, you could just one one of these pieces of software to track the F2F friends of your F2F friends. And then rather than dropping by their estate with a calling card, you could use some kind of digital medium to network with them.
Many of my F2F friends are in different parts of the world such that I haven't actually communicated with them F2F for months or years. As a result, I have no idea who their friends are anymore, and therefore without technology they are nothing more than a leaf in my network.
you could forgo the "getting to know you" part and go out "toothin" as described in one of the front page articles of wired.com
... in there with her shirt undone. 'This beats the crossword,' she said. And we took it from there."
Brits Going at It Tooth and Nail By Daniel Terdiman
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62687,00. html
02:00 AM Mar. 22, 2004 PT
The Brits sure are randy.
First came dogging, an underground swinging scene where couples and sometimes third or fourth parties engage in public sex for an exhibitionist thrill.
And now comes "toothing," where strangers on trains and buses and at bars and concerts hook up for clandestine sex by text messaging each other with their Bluetooth-enabled cell phones or PDAs.
"I've always loved the idea of random sexual encounters, but have never felt brave enough to go to (sex) parties," says Steve, a toother from Hitchin, England. "The beauty of toothing is that there's no pressure. I was reluctant to send messages at first, but the standard greeting, which I found out from (an online toothing forum) is so innocuous there is no chance of offending anyone by sending a random message."
According to the Beginner's Guide to Toothing, the online FAQ written by a man who calls himself Toothy Toothing, toothing is "a form of anonymous sex with strangers -- usually on some form of transport or enclosed area such as a conference or training seminar.... Users 'discover' other computers or phones in the vicinity and then send a speculative message. The usual greeting is: 'Toothing?'"
Toothing takes advantage of the capabilities of Bluetooth, a wireless technology that allows two devices to communicate with each other over short distances. Many mobile phones and PDAs now have built-in Bluetooth functionality and allow users to automatically locate other such devices in their vicinity.
"I live in a commuting town outside London," says Jon, or Toothy Toothing. "The train journey in the morning and evening is slow, tiresome and packed full of miserable people halfheartedly prodding at shiny new tech. You recognize faces within your tiny half-hour community, but you never talk to them."
So last November, Jon remembers, he received a text message on the train from a device called "Angela." That night, he went home and figured out how to respond to incoming text messages and did so the next day.
"Cut a long story short, the messages got more and more flirty -- and after a while I had a good idea of who she was, and I think she'd worked out who I was -- and a couple of days later she dared me to meet next to the toilets at the mainline station we were heading to. We met, we fucked and toothing was born."
Steve's introduction to toothing was similar. He had just bought himself a new mobile phone when he was pinged by someone on his commuter line. "Bored? Talk to me," the message read.
"I thought it was some kind of SMS spam," says Steve. "I was messing with the phone's settings, trying to work out what to do when I got the second message, 'I can see you struggling. Meet me in the toilet and I'll show you what to do.'"
Intrigued, he says, he did as bid.
"It was unlocked," he remembers. "A girl was
Steve and hundreds, if not thousands, of others have formed a loose-knit community via Jon's Toothing forum. Although the majority of them are men, there are also many women on the forum, such as "Mysterious Girl," "annie 2uesday," "CandyGrrrl" and others. Members discuss the etiquette of toothing, the best locations to hook up with a toothing partner and whom they hope will be the first celebrities to get involved.
Sometimes they even have a little fun with language.
Under a posting titled "3's company?" one member asked, "Anyone got any views on the statistical chance of a toothing threesome? Would it be Threething?"
In any case, toothing seems to give its participants an exercise in figur
...snd my XP in in Ultima Online make me one of the wisest people around. ...snd my ngWorldStats in Unreal Tournament makes me one of the worst serial killers in the world.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I used to think, man, when they finally get over this crufty networking and everybody just uses google or ebay or rent-a-coder for everything, then a massive amount of friction will be taken out of the economy and there will be a boom.
Instead, I think businesspeople are to some extent just automating the word-of-mouth method. The particular site I am thinking of is rolostar.com. The question is, is just doing the old, biased, rather random word-of-mouth methods in a faster and more organized way better than trying to just run a massive ebay for every service ?
I guess for things that are commodities, and I don't exclude services here -- writing a Will is a commodity legal service -- finding the lowest priced stranger on the internet is the best way. But for stuff were the very nature of it means it is custom done with a lot of interaction every time, I think social networking may prevail -- whether it is online or off.
We're still trapped in the same vortex of stupidity that caught us all in the Dot-Bomb Era. Just like the foolish VCs who are funding these companies, we're not focusing on the bottom line. How do they make money? Do they have serious business plans? Are their projections at all realistic?
Every article, every piece of information I've come across indicates that the rise of these social networking operations is evidence of yet another case of the VC sheep following the flock. Maybe I should use the term lemmings instead.
Follow the money on these operations and you'll see it's all headed relentlessly down the drain.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This article is about 7 years too late.
IMO, the likelihood of using the Internet to find substantive connections is now analagous to the chances you have of becoming good friends with someone who dials a wrong number to your telephone.
Yea, it still happens all the time, but there's a completely different dynamic to cyberspace now. Many years ago, I got a book deal off the newsgroups, found investors for a venture (who funded a startup to the tune of 6 figures without even meeting in person or talking on the phone), dated a bunch of women and more.
Nowadays, the online scene is a lot different. There are still pockets of people and meet-ups happening with networking going on, but the dynamics are not the same.
For example, an online game such as Everquest, which is a social vehicle, now seems to be mostly filled with people who use the game as an escape from reality and have no desire to communicate or get to know others outside of the game. Nobody reveals as much of themselves any more, and those that do are likely to be more on the unstable side. Cyberspace is viewed more as a medium to be vent, pretend to be someone you're not, or a distraction, rather than a catalyst for networking.
I remember the good ol' days when you could enter a chat room and actually CHAT. Now these places are arenas where people engage in contests to see who has the most meaningless one-liner.
I just spent last night trying to add friends to my friendster account. The main reason?
Its interesting to see who your friends know. This girl that I am into is on friendster and she just added me. She was talking about going to Texas to visit friends and for some reason all her friends in Texas are guys. I don't suspect anything or really care, cause we ain't even dating. This certainly does bring up some privacy concerns. . .
I fileld out a thing on friendster once, but none of my friends were interested. You can't just meet people not in your existing network there, so to this day my friend network there ends with myself. You need to have friends that will sign up for these things, and they have to have other friends that will sign up, and so forth for this idea to work as it's implemented where I've seen it. Otherwise it's a total waste of time, as it was in my case. Were my buds a bunch of party poopers by not wanting to get into that thing, or were they smarter than I? Hmmm...