facebook « William Peng

Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

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Ambient Awareness in Microblogging

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

As Twitter picks up steam, Twitter will have to convince mainstream audiences of the purpose and utility of Twitter. Skeptics of Twitter often ask, “Why would I want to know what other people are doing, and why would I want to tell other people what I’m doing?” The typical response from Twitter users is to “Just try it,” or “The first rule of Twitter is to just tweet.” This is somewhat of an unfair reason to try to convince someone, since I myself was reluctant to sign up for Twitter for over a year. Ultimately, I tried the service with an open mind (”just tweet”), and have discovered Twitter to be a useful tool.

To attempt to achieve some level of reasoning for the usefulness of Twitter, we can refer to a lucid article from the New York Times Magazine last September, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” in which Clive Thompson explains the appeal of microblogging tools like Twitter and Facebook status updates as enabling an “ambient awareness” of our circles of friendship.

In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.

One of the criticisms of the idea of ambient awareness is that you don’t want to know what someone is doing, all the time. I agree. We should all maintain a certain level of privacy in our lives, else we’d go insane. To me, the value of Twitter comes not from the constant awareness of what people are doing, but from what they are thinking about certain issues. This goes back to the discussion earlier about the purpose of social networks. I see Twitter as enabling an ambient awareness among thousands of minds.

Therefore, I think Twitter is misleading when it asks, “What are you doing?” If you answer this question too literally, you will not be maximizing the value you get from Twitter. No one wants to know that you’re going to sleep at 3 AM, except for maybe your mother, who wants you to be healthy. Of course, there will be cases when you will tweet what you are doing, but these cases will still be useful because they facilitate discussion. For example, I could tweet that I am at the Red Mango at St. Mark’s, and that I think it is superior to the Pinkberry that is literally across the street. Pinkberry loyalists would cross the street and force-feed me Pinkberry. Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic, but you get the point that a tweet motivates action and discussion. I think Facebook phrases the question better by asking, “What’s on your mind?”

Microblogging platforms break down traditional verticals of social circles and thought circles, and social networking and microblogging enable connections with those in your outer circles of relationships. We will still maintain our connections with our close circle of friends at the same level. We see them every day, and in most cases Twitter will not change that. What Twitter enables is communication and discussion among people who might never meet otherwise.

Tags: ambient awareness, facebook, twitter
Posted in Social Networks | Comments

Specialist vs. Generalist Social Networks

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

This post is cross-posted from my comment on Jim Robinson’s blog post about Social Norms in Forever-Networks. (My comment ended up being quite long, so I’d like to repost it here, and I apologize to Jim for taking up so much space in his comments section.) There has been an interesting discussion recently, particularly on Fred Wilson’s blog, about the various approaches to how we use social networks. Jim sets forth a metaphor for three spheres of influence:

The center sphere – the core – is the smallest circle, and includes immediate family, relatives I feel close to, best friends and the like. The second sphere (a concentric circle around the first) includes people I work with, people I have known a long time and/or interact with frequently, etc., i.e. those I would describe as ‘pretty close to’. The third concentric circle – and the largest – is for casual acquaintances, business contacts, folks I may have known during life’s travels but were never really close with, etc. [I suppose for those with an online 'following', perhaps a fourth, perimeter circle might be appropriate to house people one has never (or barely) met but whom nonetheless fall at the edge of one's 'network'.]

To me, online social networks – and norms – need to evolve to permit easy management, and transference, of people into one of the spheres (and indeed across sphere’s as relationships change).

I think that we are in an interesting point in time to witness the evolution of social networks and how we utilize them. There is an ambiguity in what we use social networks to achieve, whether we want to keep in touch with the “first sphere” with photo and video updates of our lives, or whether we want to be able to network with our second and third spheres of like-minded professionals.

Therefore, we run into the question of whether social networks will prevail as specialty “silo” networks like LinkedIn or as generalist networks like Facebook. The key selling point of specialty networks is the suite of features tailored to a clearly defined purpose. Currently, LinkedIn provides key features for networking that facilitate introductions to like-minded individuals. Specialist networks have the advantage of clearly compartmentalizing the spheres, as Fred Wilson has done with Twitter and Facebook.

On the other hand, generalist networks have the advantage of having a central profile (Facebook Connect), but have the disadvantage of an ambiguous definition of who sees what. That said, it will be interesting to see to what extent Facebook can stretch to accommodate these spheres of connections. We are beginning to see this with Facebook Pages for businesses and public figures, but you have to create a separate “Page” for yourself rather than consolidating everything. This is what Fred Wilson did.

What I really want to see from Facebook (generalist) is an easy way to display a different type of profile depending on the what list the person is in. For example, if a person from your first sphere views your profile, they would see more personal information, family photos, videos, etc. If a person from your second or third sphere views your profile, they would see a resume/CV type of profile, similar to that of LinkedIn. This has to be automated to a high level.

One final note is that, in the end, I find that we use the social networks that our friends also use. We saw this early on in the instant messaging space (late 90’s) with ICQ, AIM, MSN, and Yahoo Chat. The lack of defining features in IM clients/protocols commoditized the IM market. However, recently, with Google Chat, integration with Gmail seems to be a key component in converting people from commoditized IM to a protocol that is more useful to the user.

In this way, the users shape the way the a social network evolves, and I think that’s key.

Tags: facebook, generalist, linkedin, specialist, twitter
Posted in Social Networks | Comments

Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

Attention Inequality and the Power of Asymmetry

Ambient Awareness in Microblogging

Specialist vs. Generalist Social Networks