Hear, hear! This is spot-on, in my opinion. However I must add that aggregators /will /be developed and employed, despite the glaring drawbacks Gail's mentioned, but that this process of aggregation will be countered with a continued profusion of new social networking sites. A fundamental attribute of these SNSs is that they are a "network," and as such cannot possibly accommodate "the whole." Remember the fuss when Facebook opened up, first to high school students, then the public? This was obviously to counter the growing userbase of MySpace, but Facebook users cherished its stonewalled nature, for whatever reason (I don't see a need to get into that right now; I'm sure the listserv has addressed it sufficiently in other contexts). I know my point is primarily semantic here, but I find it very important in terms of system theory. The network, especially in this context, is a very abstract concept, but nonetheless I do not think its aspect of being limited in applicability and diffusion can be altered; even if it could, I do not think the population or userbase of these SNSs would placidly accept the "homogenization," as Gail so strongly put it. -Conor 'Gail Taylor wrote:
I am hesitant to say 'yes' to the suggestion there should be a way to aggregate social networking sites. I think it would lead to homogenization of practices for the user, who is currently having a 'multi-cultural' experience interacting with others in various online spaces. For example, the culture of Facebook is similar, but also different, than what one might expect hanging out in MySpace or other product that enables networking with others. This approach to aggregating processes is also one that decontextualizes information that is extracted from other souces, as opposed to allowing the user to interact in an environment where the information would be contextualized. There would be advantages and drawbacks to this approach. Depending on the knowledge and expertise of the people developing the aggregator, the program could be great or not so great for the end user.
/Gail
--------------------------------------- Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant Library & Information Science Research Assistant
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