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Social Networks At A Crossroads
mateuscb writes "A few years ago, social networking Web sites were just some newfangled technology that college students loved. But over time, they have metamorphosed into an unavoidable Internet phenomenon that is changing the way people of all ages keep in touch with friends, find long-lost acquaintances, explore new hobbies and even look for employment."
still haven't joined one. facebook, myspace, hi5... who cares. I know who my friends are.
..with the amount of employers looking through social network sites for information on employees...surely that should be "and even look for unemployment"?
I'm surprised linkedin wasn't mentioned. It's getting a lot of use by the professional social networking crowd.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Lots of people use Social Networking websites. Thanks for letting us know.
They're completely easily avoidable. Whenever I get sent a link to one, I reply with a link to http://isolatr.com/. People soon get the idea.
I know you're trying to be funny, but the story further down makes the point about the importance of privacy on a social site.
I am avoiding them without even trying. There is no social networking site that fills any need that I have.
If I want to socialise, I go and meet friends for coffee.
What a waste of bandwidth.
R
It does make sense that online community sites/networks rock. I was never interested into these until this year. I tried Facebook. I'm not advertising facebook, BTW. It's just interactive. Since I don't have time (like most of you) to talk to friends in real life, and to offer them gifts or to poke them (yeah, try poking people in real life and you end up with police chasing you lol), I do it virtually. Most people find it easier to meet others online than in real life. How many hours do you spend procrastinating around on internet messengers or IRC channels, just for the sake of 'talking' to friends? Well, Online Community Networks is way cooler, interactive, and more importantly, you can find people you've lost. Had a girlfriend/boyfriend in high school whom you lost? Find him/her online. I guess online community networks are part of our lives (a bit like /.) - we wake up, check our emails, go there to check messages, poke people, send gifts, update our profile page and status, feed our virtual pets, send messages, etc all in a matter of minutes, and it does not tax on our real life schedules. Viva Facebook and others. I'm just sad that Yahoo can't turn 360 into something really cool. With Yahoo messenger backing it up, maybe it can.
The privacy issue sucks though - example: Facebook profiles are being indexed by search engines (unless you edit your privacy settings). hmm..just a thought here, if Ajax write or the entire google docs, spreadsheet, etc is integrated into Facebook (because it's 'open'), can it be viewed as a true web OS? (don't want to go off-topic, but it's related - since when being viewed as a web OS, more people get interested into it)
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
I don't mean to sound like a Troll.. but gotta love those press junkies! That article smacks of a public relations exercise by YUNiTi. I've been approached many many times by people 'offering' to manage our public exposure.. by releasing various stories, even negative ones, to increase the sites exposure. We've even had stories sent to us 'about our site' and placed into comparison with myspace and facebook, that pitched in exactly the same way as this story - and for us to have it released to the major publications / sites would ONLY cost $X per release. Give us back proper journalism!
I remember when imeem launched its peer to peer social networking gizmo they made a great deal about the fine grained privacy settings that could be applied to everything that you were connected to, but over time they've reduced the ability of users to protect things, shifted everything from the software client to a website only, and morphed into something like 'Youtube for music'
The new imeem is way cooler.
Why is the users of these sites believe they have stumbled across some "unavoidable phenomenon"? It sounds to me like a self-justifying phenomenon (or, more precisely, a phenomenon of self-justification).
And here's the part I *don't* get -- all the comments from people saying "I don't have time to keep up with friends and family, but since I joined {Facebook/Myspace/etc} we can keep in touch and make new friends..." WTF? Maybe if you peeled your fat ass away from the computer and spent time with family and friends and maybe got involved with some activities you could make new friends.
Maybe its just Wall Street greed coupled with the myopia of 20 somethings.
A few years ago, social networking Web sites were just some newfangled technology that college students loved
...Whereas now, the first round of those original college kids have graduated and some haven't yet moved on; additionally,
their younger siblings have started using these services to get a head start on the Cool New Thing(tm). Woo-woo.
But over time, they have metamorphosed into an unavoidable Internet phenomenon
I'd call this a sad commentary on the steadily advancing age-of-first-real-job, not an "internet phenomenon". YMMV. In any case, I've managed to avoid them quite well, thankyouverymuch.
changing the way people of all ages keep in touch with friends
No, not really. The afforementioned "college kids who haven't moved on yet" use it to keep in touch. The rest of us still use the phone or email or, wonder-of-wonders, physically meeting one another.
and even look for employment.
"Look". Not "find".
These folks have a rather rude awakening to look forward to... The rest of the world really doesn't give two shakes of a rat's ass about their pathetic little ego-pages. It doesn't care about their blogs, their favorite bands, their pictures of their cat/dog/iguana/fish-named-bob.
Your future employer doesn't care about Bob-the-fish. He cares that you have the ability to work, in person, with others, and get the job done. The fact that you can't differentiate between "friends" and "people you've never met but add to a counter on your website" doesn't really help with that.
I guess I'm in some sort of minority because I *still* don't get social networking sites.
When I want to talk to someone, I e-mail them, IM, text, or phone call, whichever is appropriate for that person and for that conversation. I don't quite understand why I would want to have a personal conversation with people on some sort of public forum. The conversation would, for me at least, be less candid, because I'd always be wary of something I said in a public forum coming back to haunt me or being misunderstood by an audience for which it wasn't intended.
If people want to converse with me, a simple search for my name lead you to my web site whereby you can contact me, either through my blog or through e-mail. I certainly don't understand how a social networking site will *save* me any time. I'm in contact with my friends already. If other people start using the social networking site to hold conversations with me it'll just be one more place I need to check for messages and updates. Not to mention that it's one more place to maintain.
I'm wondering if social networking sites are not meant for geeks but for dare I say, wanna-be geeks. The people that claim to know about computers because they were able to set up their own site on myspace (or the social network du jour) and because they have a wireless access point set up in their house and were able to change the SSID (or maybe not). They want to be geeks but they don't want to put in the time and effort that it takes to actually *learn* anything, continuing on their merry way with ugly sites hacked together poorly on social network du jour.
To me, real geeks know how to set up their own web site. A real geek understands the difference between e-mail, a forum, and a chat room, maybe they even understand what usenet is. Off topic, but why do people confuse forums with chat rooms all the time. A chat room is IRC-like, where the conversation is real-time. A forum isn't.
I have yet to meet someone who I would consider to be a true geek (yes, like me), someone who actually *knows* something about computers, networking, Internet, etc, that uses one of these sites.
I* am on [Facebook/Myspace/etc.]** and have 128 social network friends... and they ALL know me and are interested in me... honest!
It's all a fad type website idea, it'll pass.
* I personally don't use those kind of sites.
** Delete as appropriate.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I'd much rather have my own website. That way, I can do what I want, how I want, etc. I don't need mybook or facespace or whatever it is to control my contacts. People that I care about have my email and phone and know my website. People that run across my website have a secondary email that they contact me should they choose. To me, their way of doing things is too constricting. I've not joined up even with friends prompting me. I have their email, phone, or address when I want to contact them. Guess I'm grumpy about these newfangled technologies.
Social networking sites seem to me to be kind of over. A few years ago I was active on a few of them; Tribe and Nerve were fun. But the fun sites are over. Myspace is just the new AOL.
Phone-based social networking is probably where things are going. Although, interestingly, the iPhone doesn't have social networking. Helio does, but nobody uses Helio.
Tell me a bit about these "social networking" websites.
I missed out on them when I was in college because I was busy going out to bars, playing sports, seeing plays, and generally being social. Then I graduated and got busy going on dates, volunteering, and traveling with friends.
So, what was I missing?
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
The rate of growth for most of the social networking sites peaked in late 2006, almost a year ago. The referenced article is a reverberation of the inflection point.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=social_networking_meme_verified
I predicted MySpace's peak in growth early in 2006, almost coincident to when it occurred. The introduction of Facebook's third party API is a sign of an industry entering a consolidated and standardization phase.
Here's something to think about; feel free to tell me if you think I'm wrong.
This is probably the first or second graduating class who spent their entire college career exposed to the social networking phenomenon. I think this is going to further drive apart the generational gaps that exist in workplaces.
I'm actually in the middle; I went to college just as the web was becoming popular. It was a really neat toy...sites like Yahoo and online retailers were just getting started. We used it just like that...a useful way to get stuff done, and maybe sent emails to people we knew.
The whole "Web 2.0" jump is a big adjustment for us 30-year-old fogies. Now the web is someplace you live your life. I've never had any desire to put up a blog about my pets, for example, because I know no one cares. I've also never seen the need to put up a Myspace page. This takes up a significant portion of social networkers' lifetimes. They work incredibly hard on their online presence, as if it were a vital component of their survival.
Anyway, back to the workplace. The "truly old school" is on the way out, but people like me are coming up to take their places at the top 10 years or so from now. Having an entire generation of new employees who have zero attention span, can't write in complete sentences and find regular work boring is probably going to cause friction. (I'm going to sound _really_ old here...how many times have you seen emails going out to customers at your job with sentences like "can u gt me the po#s b4 friday? thx") That drives me nuts -- please take two seconds and proofread e-mail! The other thing I might see happening is the "inflated self-worth" phenomenon. Someone needs to bring some of these people back to reality and make them realize that none of us is special.
I'm off to have my prune juice and medication now...
I have a Facebook account. I log into it once every one or two days, see a bunch of crap about people I could care less about and think to myself: 'man, why do I even come to this shitty place?' Then I log off.
It's a good tool for party types that just want to plan their next drinking fest. But for the anti-social types, it's just a waste of time.
Many VPs, Directors, CXOs, do not understand why social computing is so 'in' thing may be (they are old) but the youngsters do understand it.
In the US especially, with the huge number of experienced people retiring in the next 5 years and some young blood joining the ranks, it is important in two aspects to implement social software in the enterprises too.
The knowledge of the old will be lost if not captured. But any amount of documentation is not going to capture knowledge as effectively as the informal atmosphere of blogs/wikis allows a person to do so. Organizational story telling is very important in this aspect. Not many people are keen to prepare formal documents confirming to templates, standards, etc. in a huge enterprise. But many are willing to try their hand in writing stories of their experiences at work.
Thus social networking & computing is going to act as big contributor for institutionalizing the old knowledge which will be not available the next few years.
The younger generation which will join in the next five years OTOH, will already be very well accustomed to the whole concept of social computing & networking, mostly without even being aware of them. Having a social network with the enterprise is going to allow these bunch of people to mingle better & easily in addition to learning form the system.
BTW, the young blood will anyway try to bring in the social networking concept into the enterprise in spite of all the regulations against them (they are currently viewed as time wasters in the enterprise environment). So it would be prudent & proactive of the CSO (Chief Security Officer) to allow enterprise social software with the organization in everybody's interest.
Also, the growing trend these days is to telecommute, work from home. In such an environment, social networking at work does make a lot of sense. Also, this is going to be helpful in enterprises which are spread out geographically too, to bind the various dispersed diaspora & workgroups.
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We (my group at my employers place) are involved in preparing a (work in progress) modular vendor agnostic framework which would ideally involve marrying web 2.0, social networking (social computing in general) with traditional CRM systems. Our initial offerings would presumably be using a cacophony of open source solutions already available.
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In due course of our R&D we found that IBM is already into the social software arena & has launched an enterprise version called Lotus Connections.
We are now partnering with them to figure out what it is, what are its capabilities and how can it fit into our framework.
IBM has already been in touch with many big fortune 500 enterprises and are talking about multi million dollar deals!
The stuff doesn't look very techie if you are already aware of what wikis, blogs, social networking, etc. are. But it does provide that enterprise touch to the whole thing of social networking & related stuffs.
-- Prem
Aiming to tweet on a rice
"WTF? Maybe if you peeled your fat ass away from the computer and spent time with family and friends and maybe got involved with some activities you could make new friends."
Or MAYBE I can do BOTH! I frequently go out and converse with new people and make new friends... however I have some really good friends that I don't want to lose track of, and Facebook happens to provide a wonderful solution to that. If I had to correspond via letters, phone calls and long trips... I would have lost touch with many terrific people. With Facebook or other social networking sites I can move all over the country and my profile on facebook never moves... so I don't have to update new addresses to all my old friends. I also can quickly write an email/wall post to an old friend and ask how they have been doing and if either of us will be in the vicinity of the other in the near future to get together.
Despite using social networking sites to talk with friends I can ALSO go out and hang out with real people near me. This isn't a One or the other... I can "Get off my fat ass" and meet new people in person... AND I can use facebook to maintain old friendships.. even maybe make a few new ones. I've found that Social Networking sites are an extremely helpful tool.
One of my children has, in my view, far too large a footprint on the Internet, largely due to poor security practices by an employer. Fortunately they have moved house, changed telephone numbers and taken down a personal website. Anybody with a high income who reveals personal data on the Internet is, nowadays, increasing their risk of serious crime. This is probably more of a problem in Europe than the US because gated communities and security guards are rare here.
Pining for the fjords
Social networking sites are a great idea (whose time has finally come, it seems), but the implementation could use some improvement. What we need is standards, so that profiles from one site can be linked from another. I have been dragged into one social networking site kicking and screaming, and I am on a few other sites that happen to do social networking (though I joined for different reasons), but I'd rather avoid them altogether as long as there isn't a widely implemented standard so that I can ACTUALLY LINK TO PROFILES, instead of having to ask my friends to please create a profile on that other site as well, because that's what I happen to use.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The other day, someone asked me what I think of Myspace. Now, I really have something against the site, but I couldn't really explain it to her. It just feels...wrong. I noticed this sentiment is common among geeks, even geeks like me who are actually sociable people. I have been too tired to really try putting my finger on what exactly it is that is wrong with Myspace (and its ilk), but maybe others have had better luck. If you recognize my sentiment and have maneged to put it into words, could you please post?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Facebook is cleaner and nicer to use but their are so many applications all doing the same thing, fun wall, super fun wall, super dooper fun shout wall with candy - and it gets messy.
Myspace is messy by design but the prepubesant little shits like the colours and crap and seems to be the most popular.
Bebo, hi-5 and the rest are smaller and less useful.
Its like IM again, some use AIM, some yahoo and others msn - all offering a different experience and you end up going where your friends are... like it all not.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
They are eminently avoidable. Not "unavoidable" at all... rather, I feel they are mostly unoriginal, unattractive, undesirable, ungainly, unpleasant...
"Even if all she can see is my last login date, I prefer to let her wonder whether or not I'm still alive."
She could always dredge the local river.
There are still only 3 types of people who use social networking sites:
* Emo
* Posers
* People who don't have enough of a real life
Of course it so happens that people who need jobs and internet friends fall into one or more of the above categories. Social networking is a good research tool though: namely, if you see someone you know on there, you probably want to distance yourself from that person. At work, there was a group of people who were all about the MySpace, and all of those people turned out to be complete human garbage. Suffice to say, there has yet to be a person on MySpace who I would have chosen to meet had I been given the choice.
Through a decade of technological "progress" the Internet self-important-erati have slowly been inventing the equivalent of the venerable BBS. What's worse, those who arrived to the party late actually think they've created something new that hasn't been done before.
It's both amusing and frustrating to see the BBS spoken of as a technology of yesteryear, while mainstream Internet culture gets closer and closer to being an exact duplicate of BBS culture. Strip away all of the fancy buzzwords and you've basically got the same thing: people connecting to each other online.
As a BBS sysop of nearly 20 years (please visit us online!) I can say with certainty that nothing has changed. Everything old is new again. And may I say to the "Web 2.0" and "social network" people: you didn't invent it.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
or in my morning bowl of Archduke Chocula How else? Just make sure you take the tablet out of the bowl before you add the water to make the gravy.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I've been questioned like this before over the phone - a financial institution that questioned me asked me questions from "publicly available information" which "confirmed that I am who I say I am." (The way they did it was to ask me multiple choice questions about my address from ten years ago, and which bank I once had a loan from, etc.)
From StrikeForce Technology's web page:
I have one question: If I, as the end user, am the only one who can have the correct answers, how can you verify my answers?Bah, "feel-good" security for suckers.
Do you really want a website, not under your own control, to have the following:
Your real name, hobbies, interests, spending patterns, perhaps your work experience etc etc.
Potential employers will be able to google you, and once your stuff in there, it never goes completely away, even if you edit or delete the page. So the law forbids them to ask for your age, gender, sexual preference, political affiliation, drinking habits etc etc, they won't have to, they can just google for it. You'll never know.
It is also an advertiser's wet dream. Targetted advertisements can be tailor made to suit your profile. Such an asset is worth a fortune to advertisers. Do you really believe this potential fortune will not be tapped? Your profile will be indexed, you can count on that.
A security breach will inevitably will happen one day - if not on the social site itself, then perhaps on the server of one of their advertisers, or a trojan on the PC of one of your friends, who can see your profile. This will put your profile into the hands of a spammer, who will sell it to other spammers.