merely social software or objectively social

I always enjoy listening to Jyri Engeström, and this year again he did not let us down.

He was looking into social software services of the kind we all link to each other in these days - LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace...

Sitting at the back of the auditorium my mind was on all the places where I am and where people link to me and vice versa, often the same people in more than one place. In the beginning kind of fun, but what then?

Jyri's postulate was that services offering nothing but social connection - LinkedIn was mentioned - will have a limited life span. Some kind of social object has to be a part of the experience according to Jyri - like photos, videos, or at minimum some of the music objects that Myspace focus on.

And I tend to agree, all the linking is nice enough but the "so what" feeling is there already.

Comments

[Dennis Howlett]

Which is why I find FaceBook so (potentially) interesting - photos, video etc etc...al there.

[phil jones]

I disagree. What I find fascinating with LinkedIn is that it's the only social network that my non-internet-geek, real-life friends and colleagues ever seem to get into.

It's so *inert*, it doesn't seem to do anything. I never have a reason go there.
But, sure enough, regularly, every 3-6 months or so, I get another invite from an ex-colleague or a notice telling me that existing contacts have added another connection.

I'm starting to think that this slow, undemanding network has got a secret strength. Maybe it's unthreatening : you don't feel it's going to consume more of your time than you can afford or confront you with strange people you'd rather not deal with. Maybe it's the *lack* of a social atmosphere - unlike something like Tribe, you don't go there to *meet* new people, only to keep a hold on the existing people you have almost no other reason to keep up with except that you wouldn't want to lose them altogether.

Perhaps this is a "strength of weak ties" kind of thing.

[sig]

Hard to predict the future of products indeed!

Phil, I can see what you mean about LinkedIn - personally have the same experience but still I really seldom use it, at most for a quick CV kind-of-thing. And that is perhaps the "social object" there? Then again I can see how some uses it to "pad" their CV, 500+ connections makes me think "aha, stamp collector!".

Thing is that precisely same thing happens with so many conference sites now - Lift, Reboot... links created and then forgotten.

I had to learn from my kids how to use Facebook - they use it to plan then upload images from some get-together, then comment on it. Then they move on to next event. The events being the "social objects" I guess. Dennis, something to try for next event that?

(BTW, in the world of niche connection areas Facebook is kind of fun - there I can find folks I will not find elsewhere, including my kids :) )

Good thing that none of us is dependent on these things, no skin off our nose if we drift off or the service die or not - but still a very interesting experiment to be a part of - social science lab in practice!

[Duncan Drennan]

I know what you mean about the "so what" experience. Sometimes I just don't get it. But maybe I (we) are wrong in that sites like facebook, myspace, etc. connect people together in a new way, which really cuts to the core of our humanity. People want to connect, people want to feel like they are part of something.

Maybe I'm just too task orientated. I get excited about output. I want to innovate, create, change the world. Fine if some people just want to chat, but I want to change the world.

Maybe it is just a case of Malcom Gladwell's three archetype personalities (from the Tipping point), Connector, Mavern, Salesman. I probably fall mostly into the Mavern category, while those people actively involved with Facebook are Connectors (or just killing time). How do we leverage those connections to spread ideas? Maybe that is what we should be asking.

Your thingamy ideas are powerful (I think)...how do they spread?

[sig]

Duncan, good point that one, and something to think about "how to make the best of it" instead of tinkering with "does it have a future" :)

And as I said before, worst bet one can do is to sit down and predict... cluetrain it is.

As to thingamy ideas; one by one - readers of this blog and the thingamy site, meeting and chatting - that's why I go to conferences and such!

But I also do believe in what Seth says about ideas spreading - a good story is only one part, it has to be easy for others to tell in such a fashion that it immediately stirs interest... and that part is damned hard to attain! :) Working on it every waking moment, but progress is at best incremental in that department.

Good thing though is that it is not a product for the masses thus does not need a mass market spread of ideas, after all the number of people that need to grasp it does not have to be many. One install can lead to thousands of users, and spreading from there is all about success for the user (that she beats the shit out of her competition) so that is what I must focus on. A friggin good product, one-on-one discussions and even better follow up.

[John Dodds]

1) LinkedIn is a network whereas the others are communities - perhaps community is engendered by the social objects involved or perhaps LinkedIn's raison d'etre being networking means that is business social rather than genuinely social.

2) Age is a critical factor. Danah Boyd has highlighted how users of Myspace and latterly Facebook tend to use extend their existing social networks into times when they cannot physically be together while older people don't have that physical/financial restriction and thus have less use of virtual social networks except when it comes to geography.

[Niko]

Sorry for the long comment... this is a brain fart ;)

LinkedIn definitely has the people who "get it" and those who don't. And a bit I wonder why. Because if you read on the LinkedIn site the idea HOW you're supposed to use it, it all makes perfect sense. Maybe it's a RTFM thing.

Personally, I find LinkedIn is not the site I use most actively, but it's the most useful network site I'm on:

For me it is a CV with the huge added value of recommendations from people who have worked with me.

It allows me to politely try and connect with anyone in the world, no matter how "out of reach" those people would be using other ways of communication.

When meeting new people, it lets me check what they've done and who they've worked with. Comes in handy if you're committing into a project with people you don't yet know.

And last, when I'm being asked "do I know [insert job description here]", searching my LinkedIn contacts works way better than searching my address book which is bound to be out of date.

Now comparing this to other services, for me Facebook does nothing, and Flickr is a nice pic database with good privacy controls, but I do hardly any network activity there. MySpace -- totally useless, as I don't have "the object" to network around there. Last.fm -- personal history of listened music, but again, I do no socializing whatsoever through the service.

Maybe Jyri's social object idea is about objects that are socialized around. Kind of like getting together with people sharing a common interest (the object) and entertaining themselves, killing time, and *possibly* in rare cases, furthering a "serious" goal such as advancing a career. (I do NOT want to say advancing a career is nobler than killing time, I'm just saying it's more serious :) LinkedIn on the other hand is more of a tool: you use it as little as needed, when needed.

[sig]

Niko,

is there a manual at LinkedIn? Wow, never thought of that, well I never RTFM anyway... :)

I can see the usefulness of LinkedIn as a CV repository - but, methinks old fashioned self authored CVs are out, or at least on their way out. Reading blogs, and in particular responses and heated discussions in groups or on blogs is so much more interesting and says much more about how a person will behave and act in the future.

If Facebook groups picks up in usefulness as discussion areas (have not really seen that yet) well then I think it will become useful as I can in one glimpse see the areas of interest for a person, and follow links to her input and reactions. That's what you'd want as an employer methinks.

Still, all those services are there for our picking - free and easy, so we users can dip our toes, follow with interest and just enjoy it all :)

[Niko]

True. Whether I agree with old fashioned CVs being on their way out depends on what you mean... If "old fashioned" means bragging about your accomplishments, I agree. If it means simply listing where you've worked, I do not agree. I think that information is even more important now than before.

You see, before the CV was just a list of (hopefully prestigious) companies. If you had a lot of companies there, you picked those that looked the best. That's defining You by yourself.

Now the CV is a list of companies, by which the reader can find tens of people who have actually worked with you. That's defining You by the people who know you, which I believe brings about a clearer picture of who you actually are. Very 2.0, not going out at all. ;)

[sig]

Niko,

you're right of course that the CV will always have use - a factual overview, most useful etc.

What I was thinking was more the "read CV" > "call former employee" > etc. I would put the person's actual traces of writings, reactions and comments as more useful.
If I could see real reactions, how she handles a troll or a heated discussion or how he handles when he made a mistake or even a fool of himself - now that's valuable ;)

[whitneymcn]

I've been thinking quite a bit recently about what makes software "social," and this discussion has given me some more interesting directions to explore -- thanks, all.

To expand on what some others have suggested, I think that Linkedin is a slightly different animal than most of the others mentioned. It's certainly "social," but it's focused on exposing one's existing (but hidden in the offline world) relationships, rather than discovering possible new relationships online.

Where much social software goes the route of "find me people or things I don't know about that are like the people or things I like," Linkedin simply monitors the intersections between self-defined social groups.

Sure, that lacks the excitement of a site that's doing something like evaluating those social groupings and doing something with that data, but I'm not sure that makes it less valuable.

It's really something closer to "implicitly" social software than "explicitly" social software: it doesn't really help you connect to anyone new or significantly enhance your existing relationships, but rather exposes information about your social network that would otherwise be difficult to find -- the actual "social" element of it is something you have to take care of yourself.

I wrote something that touched on a similar topic a few months ago, as well: objective-focused vs. freeform flavors of social software.

[sig]

Whitney,
excellent point - and I agree!
Being fond of farfetched parallels: LinkedIn would be the "business market" parallel to the "meat market" of a Studio 54 in the eighties, a place to strut your stuff, connect practically and get down to business if "lucky", not much connecting of minds going on there :D

At the end it is like you say "implictly" or "explicitly" - connecting or communicating social software. A base for socialising or just a tool to connect for later socialising... interesting thought!

[Niko]

Exactly: modeling an existing network versus networking in unknown waters (or spirits, in case of Studio 54. I would imagine. I wasn't really born yet then. ;)

But as the defender of what is LinkedIn, I would have to add to Whitney's point that LinkedIn *does* let you connect with new people. Actually, I would say it lets you connect with new people who matter to you, rather than just unknown random people who algorithmically share your musical taste, or whatever.

Last time I used it I got through to digital marketing management at European Space Agency. The "links" along the chain put forward my request, adding their helpful remarks, and I got a dialog going in two days. Would the same happen through other networking sites? I doubt it. Would it happen if I cold called ESA? I doubt that too.