The "economics of superstars" might be relevant here. Rosen (1981) provides a model explaining how differences in success (measured by income) in the arts and sport can be far greater than the differences in talent. Adler (1985) presents a model where large differences in earnings can exist with no differences in talent. Adler argues that stardom is not due to the stars' superior talent but rather due to the need of consumers for a common culture i.e. to consume the same art that other consumers do. So if we think of social networking site features as "talent", this could help explain why some SNSs became superstars despite not being better than the others. Actually the network effect inherent in SNSs makes superstar dynamics even stronger. Rosen, S. (1981). The economics of superstars. American Economic Review, 71(5):845-858. Adler, M. (1985). Stardom and talent. American Economic Review, 75(1):208-212. Rob ------------------------------------- Dr Robert Ackland Fellow and Masters Coordinator, Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, The Australian National University e-mail: robert.ackland@anu.edu.au <mailto:robert.ackland@anu.edu.au> homepage: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/robert.php project: http://voson.anu.edu.au Information about the Master of Social Research (Social Science of the Internet specialisation): http://adsri.anu.edu.au/study/msr.php ------------------------------------- On Thu, 2011-07-21 at 16:29 -0700, Dan Perkel wrote:
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:24 PM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org <mailto:aoir.z3z@danah.org>> wrote:
What folks never seem to remember in this space is that it's *NEVER* about the features. It's about the cultural dynamics.
I would amend that point by saying that the features are a part of the cultural dynamics, rather than separate from them. One question to ask is what is the "it" that we are talking about.
Dan
------------------------------------ Dan Perkel PhD Candidate School of Information, Berkeley Center for New Media UC Berkeley http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dperkel <http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Edperkel>
danah
On Jul 21, 2011, at 10:55 AM, Nicholas John wrote:
I'm doing some historical work on social network sites using the Wayback Machine and I've come across a site called Multiply. Today Multiply is much more about shopping than it is a full-blown SNS, but it's fascinating to look at what it was offering in 2004 - it's About page is basically a description of what we do on Facebook today. Most interestingly, though, is the level of granularity it offered in terms of who could see our posts (not dissimilar to Google+'s circles, which everyone is so excited about in that it solves a problem in Facebook). For each post you can specify who can see it at quite a remarkable degree of granularity (everyone; your network, your contacts, or a custom list). It also, in 2004, promises alerts when someone in your network does something (i.e., a news feed). Was anyone here on that site in those days? Does anyone know what happened to it given that they really seemed to have online social networking fairly sussed seven years ago. I'd be very interested to find out... Thanks Nicholas _______________ Dr. Nicholas John sociothink.com @nicholasajohn _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org> mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria
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