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The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking to The Verge, author and Microsoft Researcher Danah Boyd put words to a feeling I've had about Facebook and other social networking sites for a while, now: 'The era of Facebook is an anomaly.' She continues, 'The idea of everybody going to one site is just weird. Give me one other part of history where everybody shows up to the same social space. Fragmentation is a more natural state of being. Is your social dynamic interest-driven or is it friendship-driven? Are you going there because there's this place where other folks are really into anime, or is this the place you're going because it's where your pals from school are hanging out? That first [question] is a driving function.' Personally, I hope this idea continues to propagate — it's always seemed odd that our social network identities are locked into certain websites. Imagine being a Comcast customer and being unable to email somebody using Time Warner, or a T-Mobile subscriber who can't call somebody who's on Verizon. Why do we allow this with our social networks?"
"None ever used this thing that wasn't available before, therefore (loads of rationalizations)"
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
Phone system?
-Dave
No, the phone system is a network of compatible and standardized endpoints. No one really cares how they are connected, just like no one would care if Facebook didn't use the internet. I think the phone system is a pretty good example.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Right or wrong, the reason a large site like Facebook stays large as most people dont want to have to go different places to do what amounts to the same thing.
Would you rather go to 10 friends house each week for 30 minutes each, or everyone hang out at one for the afternoon? Most people would not choose all the running around.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Facebook is not a place that everyone goes to. It is merely a hosting platform where people create zillions (of partially overlapping) "places" that they go to. Those millions of people are not on your Friends list. Facebook is millions of "places", not one. (However, George Takei's page is indeed the one single place in the world where everyone goes. But just for his stuff; nobody reads the comments.) As for Facebook "bombarding your news feed with useless information 24x7", ummm, that doesn't happen to me. Get a life?
> Is your social dynamic interest-driven or is it friendship-driven? Are you going there because there's this place where other folks are really into anime, or is this the place you're going because it's where your pals from school are hanging out?
I believe those different groups are called "social circles", and Facebook started supporting the concept in 2011, after Google+ made it central to their interface. Facebook is the MEDIUM for different grugroups to communicate. Facebook is not the group.
Yes, it would be weird if every group gathered at the same physical location. It would not be weird if they all drove in cars to get there. Facebook isn't a physical space that crams everyone together. It's a method of getting to different groups a person belongs to.
FB will be "lame" sooner or later. Give it 2-5 years and everyone will be jumping on that next best thing.
I'd generally agree with this, but I was the guy saying that 5 years ago. Everything has a peak, but it seems to be too soon to tell.
>"author and Microsoft Researcher Danah Boyd [...] Imagine being a Comcast customer and being unable to email somebody using Time Warner, or a T-Mobile subscriber who can't call somebody who's on Verizon. Why do we allow this with our social networks?"
That's a good question, Ms. "Microsoft researcher". Perhaps you can imagine a world where people can exchange documents freely and accurately without proprietary software like MS-Word. Or a world where consumers can put any OS they want on any computer without MS working with vendors to try and block them at the BIOS level. Or imagine people sharing calendar events easily without using MS's Exchange/Outlook formats. MS tried to hijack the web with IE (and did so successfully for years), and lied about their competitors to prevent diversity, locked out vendors from including Linux or other FOSS on machines, corrupted exported filters to make sure files to/from competitors would be partially broken. And the list goes on and on. Microsoft has been responsible for more lock-in and anti-compatibility than any other tech company, so perhaps I find it ironic that someone from Microsoft would ask us to imagine any kind of world of incompatibility.
lockin/networkeffect is so much easier a business model than competing based on excellence.
it's an interesting question to ponder: at what level of clue do customers begin to care? does the mass market ever reach that level? implicitly, sure - a service won't succeed which can't interoperate at least well enough. but how many customers really understand the concept of protocol or API - understand it well enough to realize that it permits vendor-independent services?
kids have already jumped ship. once their parents started 'fb-ing' they figured it was time to find something else.
they won't last in the spotlight forever. the whole social networking thing is like a swarm and swarms never stay in one place forever. another will pop up and the swarm will go there (or a few places).
the thing that annoys me the most is that webmasters seem to feel compelled to put up those stupid F and T icons and to join in that nonsense. if you are a company, you 'have' to be on both of those mindless services.
I'd like to see some icons that proudly state 'I'm NOT on fb or tw. I have no icons and nothing for you to follow me on'. I'd have more respect for the business if they put THAT on their website.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
> by leaving your comfort zone.
How is socializing with other members of your faith leaving your comfort zone? Church IS your comfort zone. So is the marketplace where you gather with FRIENDS.
>The real anomaly is in the walls that keep us from knowing each other.
Like the one that surrounds facebook, and the walls within facebook that prevent certain interactions between its members.
Sure they want to have one. To play some FB game, to put some pics on it, but certainly not to socialize with their friends. Well, at least not once puberty sets in, they notice that their parents (or their parents' friends) have FB accounts and they can't really avoid "friending" them.
Then they'll be looking for some other medium to communicate with their peers where their parents are not going to be able to snoop.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Two words: Network effects.
Facebook succeeds not because it's anything special, but because a critical mass of the population uses it, and each person can independently decide the shape of their "community". If I meet someone new in the real world, and want to keep up with what's going on in their life, odds are we're both on Facebook. Nobody else offers that. A new competitor could start that was 100x better than Facebook in every technological way, but until they reached a critical mass of users nobody would care.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.