Social Networking - the future
From an article on Google Buzz by Robert Scobie - this is an answer about malleable social graphs and if Facebook will sink other crowd gathering networks...I worked on a social graph application in 1999 which attempted to form groups on one hand and published professional reviews (usually very acidic) on the other. It used an analogical search function (which these applications seem to lack) and would be the key to being mallible. Not being a share holder I will not say what it was but the sharing of places to go, and the resultant conflict between masses of people with banal interest (think of crowds who attend a popular sport event - temporary - simple reasons for attachment) and the small groups of specialised interest have very different algorithms. Map location is not the first 2D associative array.
A malleable graph must work on a variable number of dimensions and FB may have the best chance of gathering enough interesting things about your trails of interest to suggest things to do - but if that is their plan - to become a social mind - then it may work better if everyone uses the same platform.
For example today I don't really feel like going to a 3 hour film but I do not yet realise that. If I go and wander the shops I may be interested in Sushi restaurants and if I can see my friends will gather at a pub, I would like to be invited, rather than informed? So the app needs to know not just what I may do, but be oriented at making connections to those nearby. But if my friends all wanted to see a 3 hour movie, I may not prefer to join them for lunch. That human behaviour is just a little hard to predict. But it is nice to be informed.
The trouble with business focused apps is they attempt to sell to advertisers rather than people.
I think opportunities like this may well work better on FB where people randomly express themselves in a fairly banal way. Buzz may well work better for discussions like this. Opening up new ideas and connections. Being invited to in depth discussion seminars with luminaries - that would not work against a social graph that did not reveal the inner workings of one's mind. Buzz works for people who think, Twitter does also, but very on the web, link-wise - but is "followers" an inaccurate term?
These location based apps and FB fail in one respect as it is not about desire (advertising). It is about reaction and incidence (information).
posted by Nicholas @ 3:34 AM
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