Invisible Membranes
Yesterday, I touched upon some of the burdens of SNS developers and participants that result from the current crop of SNS applications. The thrust of yesterday's entry was that there were a great deal of assumptions being acted on and our tight focus on the immediate need was throttling the full-on diversification of the industry as a whole.
Today, both Clay Shirky and Stowe Boyd have added some fuel to this line of thinking, specifically addressing the unstated expectations of both SNS proprietors and users alike. On the one hand, the developers must deal with the forces and stressors of "success" where users, on the other hand, are battling intention and abuse.
As Clay notes:
Openness creates growth which creates value which creates incentive which creates system-gaming which damages openness.
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(As an aside: is it really 2004 and people are still retro-fitting sites to deal with the almost universal results of rapid social growth? People people people, this always happens — community software is unlike, say, audio editing tools in that success is much harder to deal with than failure. If you plan to succeed, plan to deal with success…)
Also in the same post, Clay discusses the hyper-input nature of SNS via which users are expected to build and groom the network on the behalf of the SNS, as opposed to the traditional service model of yesteryear that actually delivered value TO the consumer. This harkens back to yesterday's thought: "What's In It For Me?" (or as Clay pokes, "Do more work to help us bother you less!®").
Toward the close of this entry, Clay relates back an experience Stowe Boyd had with one member of Linked In. I recall speaking with Stowe about this very character and talking about this form of manipulation. In short, the main issue raised by Stowe stems from the runtime adjustments of the system boundaries, the "gaming" of the thing, if you will. As Stowe notes:
My take is that the interpretation of business intent will drive acceptance and rejection from potential customers. Any successful SNA service will have to align itself with some inviolable set of principles that deal with privacy and security, but just as importantly, with the ethical application of access. We can't have shifting boundaries and agreements in this regard.
I recall asking Stowe one question in relation: "What's wrong with monetizing the rolodex?". He gave me the same answer. I still think, however, that these types of relationships happen in layers. Since rules are not explicit or otherwise quantified as bonds form, it's up to either party to use and abuse the thing to the point that the bond snaps.
Moving forward, systems will likely organize, in one way or another, to extend more of this "messiness" to the user so pacts are bi-directional and accountable. Of course, when that happens, the network isn't as pretty to look at -- but whosaid it had to be anyway?