The Crossroads of SNS 1.0 and 2.0
The evolution of Social Networking Software is a constant and intriguing topic for many studying and interacting with this industry. I'm starting to consider adding a SNS 2.0 category to the Twister to provide some more organization. Danah Boyd posts her speaker notes from the ETech Conference. She's got some great content over there and specifically tries to introduce a bit of appreciation for the underlying trends and laws that govern this increasingly crowded space.
Danah provides a very clear description of the current situation with SNS 1.0:
We're at a cross-roads with social networking software.
We can pretend that the current path we're on - Friendster, orkut, LinkedIn, Tribe, etc. - is all the hype. We can pretend like it's really possible to force these users to create everyday social networks that will make all the theory fall into place. We can sell this fantasy to VCs, bankroll money and hope that users will play along long enough to make it all worth it.
OR
We can wake up and make sense of what we've done. Together, developers have created a new social architecture; users have created a new set of social norms that sit on top of that architecture. Certainly, it's sociologically fascinating - that's why i'm here! But it's also teaching us a lot about how people can and will use technology to socialize, what they're weaknesses are and why. The discomforts that users feel are calling for new technology, new ways to handle social behavior. The more we try to force them into behaving the way we want, the less we'll be able to solve the problem.
But that's the problem. Social behavior doesn't have a technological solution. We're all involved with social software because we see needs that technology can solve. Yet, by building the technology, we don't simply address or fail to address those needs; we create new realities. At this point, we need to think in a new way. We need to think about what new realities we formed, what new problems evolved, what new needs happened. Then we need to iterate.
Source: Apophenia via Many-to-Many
Further on, she outlines a few of the open issues that seem to have piled up at the door of SNS 2.0:
- How do we create a nuanced way for people to negotiate different social contexts without creating unbearable collisions?
- How do we let people show face? In other words, how do we let them be socially appropriate?
- Some people want to be seen; some people want to be hidden. By making everyone far more accessible, those who have something desired become more visible targets. While trying to elevate those in need, give them newfound access to their networks, we can't overwhelm the targets and expect them to play along. How do we meet the needs of different people?
- Finally, how do we create architecture that will allow for regulation through social norms? This is a huge challenge! Sure, we can all think back to MUDs and MOOs where social norms created the boundary cases of acceptable behavior. But we also all know the story of LamdaMOO and why it failed. The code that we build does not currently allow for rich regulation based on social norms. Trolls ruin it for all of us. This is part social problem and part technological problem. If we open our eyes to the social, perhaps we can figure out how to iterate on the technological?
I think this line of reasoning is dead on and really requires a great deal of consideration as SNS 2.0 is being planned.