More Thoughts on Social Networking
I had a conversation with Jonas about social networking sites like Friendster or Orkut. I walked away with two big ideas from that conversation. The first problem with social network sites is there is no social capital to be spent or gained by using these sites. You are not really interacting with people, you are just there on your own. The only form of social capital is having more friends in your network.
The second problem is that the only status you can assign someone is yes or no as a friend. You cannot say what kind of friend they are or how close they are to you. Everyone has the same connection to you. That makes the connection less important. If I am trying to use a site like this to interact with people, I want to know how well my 'friends' know their 'friends'.
All of this makes me think there is a lot of work needed to improve this sites. I do not think they will useful anytime soon.
I had a conversation with Jonas about social networking sites like Friendster or Orkut. I walked away with two big ideas from that conversation. The first problem with social network sites is there is no social capital to be spent or gained by using these sites. You are not really interacting with people, you are just there on your own. The only form of social capital is having more friends in your network.
The second problem is that the only status you can assign someone is yes or no as a friend. You cannot say what kind of friend they are or how close they are to you. Everyone has the same connection to you. That makes the connection less important. If I am trying to use a site like this to interact with people, I want to know how well my 'friends' know their 'friends'.
All of this makes me think there is a lot of work needed to improve this sites. I do not think they will useful anytime soon.
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