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koganbotOver on Tumblr, in a reblog and response to Tom, I said that places such as Facebook and Tumblr and ilX shouldn't be called "social networks," this for the same reason that we shouldn't call highway systems and phone systems and bars and coffee houses "social networks." But thinking about it more, I'm not so sure that we can't call such things "social networks," if we want to. People will do so whether we want them to or not.
What we need to keep in mind, though, is that "Facebook" isn't analogous to "Tom and the people whom he has conversations with about music," most of the latter constituting what I consider a genuine social network, if not a strictly identified or clearly bounded one — that is, "Tom Ewing" may be a node that connects a lot of people in my rock-critic/musicwrite world, and it makes sense to call these people a network, say "Tom's music-convo network"; but that doesn't mean that we're always clear as to whether someone is in the network or not in the network, the network being a set of fairly loose associations. The term "network" is useful nonetheless. My point is that the terms "social network" and "social media" don't explain themselves, so we have to be alert to what in particular we're talking about when we use them in particular situations.
What we need to keep in mind, though, is that "Facebook" isn't analogous to "Tom and the people whom he has conversations with about music," most of the latter constituting what I consider a genuine social network, if not a strictly identified or clearly bounded one — that is, "Tom Ewing" may be a node that connects a lot of people in my rock-critic/musicwrite world, and it makes sense to call these people a network, say "Tom's music-convo network"; but that doesn't mean that we're always clear as to whether someone is in the network or not in the network, the network being a set of fairly loose associations. The term "network" is useful nonetheless. My point is that the terms "social network" and "social media" don't explain themselves, so we have to be alert to what in particular we're talking about when we use them in particular situations.
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Date: 2012-03-13 05:51 pm (UTC)I think that in general you consider this sort of phenomenon — that online experience is individualized — of way more significance than it actually is.* In any event, for my interests, which tend to be about how people cluster and how these clusters constitute social landscapes, even for the loners, I can too see who tends to congregate around Tom Ewing and which congregations he tends to be a part of, even if I can't take an exact snapshot of your Facebook T or your email address book.
*My life, online and off, is individualized. That's why it's my life and not someone else's. But in general, though I can't back this up with proof, I believe that as people become more connected (by whatever means) their experience overall becomes more similar to each other's. But the conversation about the Internet/Interwebs** seems intent on hammering home the opposite contention, that we are getting more individualized and diverse. This is because people near me experience, e.g., Frank drifting away from the norm and away from us and over to K-pop. Whereas what's actually happening is K-pop and Kogan moving towards one another.
**"Online" and "Internet" seem to now be shorthand for all sorts of activity, more and more of which is taking place on handheld wireless devices, not limited to the Internet.