On 9/10/06, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
One problem with almost all social software is that it makes two false assumptions: (a) It assumes that relationships are dichotomous: Friend/Non-Friend.
Or that it is unidimensional. Tribe.net, I believe, orkut, and others have tried to provide a bit more nuance here, at the encouragement of the community. But adding gradations isn't enough. "Friend" in the social networking systems parlance really covers a range of personal relationships. Note that Flickr allows you to put people into a few different groups. * "contact" * "friend" * "family" I suspect that most systems consider "friend" to be "contact." I also suspect that most people do not define "friends" the same way their software does, though there is almost certainly "leakage" in terminology. And, frankly, I think that these kinds of issues are leading to everyday elaboration of such gradations (viz BFFL, friends with benefits, and other neologisms). What I find most interesting about the Flickr case is that you can mark photographs appropriate for "friends" or "family" or both. Just because I want my friends to see a photo doesn't mean that I want my Mom to. To which the natural answer is "duh!" But many systems that allow for gradations in "friendliness" assume that you want to reveal the most to your closest friends/family, when that may not be the case at all. Spring break in Mexico is not for Moms, and in many cases is not for SOs or even close friends.
(b) It assumes that friends all belong to the same group.
It certainly seems to clump them together that way. But I would argue that many social networking systems have at least the implicit objective (inasmuch as they seem to have an objective at all), of performing the function of linking up your network of friends. Systems like LinkedIn, especially, seem to be keyed directly to making introductions within your network, but that is a major function of most of these systems. I've suggested elsewhere that these systems (blogs too) are moving us *away* from networked sociability as they tend to aggregate our relationships in a way that feels much more like a constrained physical/geographical community. My "contacts" at work, and in my home town, and in my hobby club, and at school are now much more likely to know each other through my blog or through my social networking system than they would have been a few years ago. - Alex -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //