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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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no subject
Date: 2012-03-12 08:54 pm (UTC)Complicating the establishment of this distinction:
- Facebook itself used "social graph" to represent E but confusingly also sometimes would use it to represent T, and lots of other start-ups which didn't have a very big E just used them interchangeably.
- I can only perceive T, and short of distributing screenshots or giving people my passwords I am the only person who can perceive T. I can't usefully perceive E. But when the media talk about Facebook or things happening "on Facebook" it seems to me they can sometimes drift into assuming a perceptible E. (Other platforms DO have some level of real Everybody-ness - Twitter has its "trending topics" for instance - but Facebook has far less of these.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 05:36 pm (UTC)I could create a category "People I Talk To On The Telephone" and notice that this is not demographically identical to "People I Email," which is not demographically identical to "People I Converse With Online On So-Called 'Social Media.'" And I can create subcategories, e.g., "People I Talk To On My Landline" and "People I Call On My Cell," and maybe add the category "People I Text." And again there will be demographic differences. But nonetheless, I don't see where any of these are coherent categories. Or at least we'd have to ask, "For what purposes and in what circumstances would these be coherent categories?" I chatted on the phone with my mom, and got a call from the receptionist at my dentist to remind me of an appointment, and Phil called to see if he could swing by and drop off his manuscript. And we're all over fifty. But I've not identified even a remotely cohesive social group or social network here, "People I Talk To On The Phone."
Whereas "People Frank Converses With About K-pop" may well be a group or category that has impact as such. But that group won't include everyone I talk to about K-pop; e.g., won't include my Denver friends Brenda and Chris whom I forward links to ("Here's music I'm listening to that you might enjoy but that you probably won't hear about from anyone else," which features Dev and Azealia Banks as well as K-pop, and annotations as to whether a clip is safe for work). And it will include some people on Rolling K-pop whom Mat has had interchanges with but I haven't, since I rarely visit Rolling K-pop. And putting "Frank" in the title of that category is a sort-of identifier, but it isn't crucial.
But let's say someone were to give me and no one else a piece of hot information, to see whether and how far it disseminates from there, and to whom. Then "Whom Frank in particular actually converses with, and who he is likely to think is interested in this particular bit of hot gossip, and whom they converse with and who they think are interested in it" become very relevant. But again, "Whom he and they impart the information to on the phone" and "Whom they impart the information to on Facebook" don't strike me as immediately relevant categories, even if there are demographic differences.
Someone could say, "I wonder what the response of the koganbot lj K-pop crowd was to SNSD on Letterman and Kelly," and that makes sense, "koganbot" and "lj" short-hand identifiers for a loose cluster of people. But "koganbot" and "lj" here aren't actually defining, and may not always be accurate — if, say, I didn't play much part in this specific conversation, and in fact wasn't really the locus of the crowd who did so, for instance over on Tumblr or on
no subject
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.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 09:42 pm (UTC)It's in the interest of brands to operate under the assumption that they can define, measure, and predict things like: networks size and shape, influence, virality... But also, the category "People Frank Talks To On The Phone" is of no use to anyone unless you create it (eg. by making an LJ filter or Facebook group, say), at which point the brand will assume you went to the effort for a reason. They might not know what your metric for linking these people together was, but they take it as given that there is one, and then that gets plugged into the black box that predicts relative influence (I don't know if anyone is doing specifically this, but I can see a workable model).
But on the other hand, the whole idea that these groups are meaningful is a red herring that only exists because there are these behavioural models to sell.