4 ms·

Why do all "social networks" have to be a feed of news? Couldn't anyone think of anything better than a system in which people are only encouraged to talk about

by fiatjaf 10y ago

Why do all "social networks" have to be a feed of news? Couldn't anyone think of anything better than a system in which people are only encouraged to talk about themselves and try to get other people's approval? In which having more "friends" is always better, because you have more potential for self-agrandissement in your narcissistic posts?

mr_spothawk 10y ago
I'm all ears.
- mypalmike 10y ago
  Social networks could be topic-oriented rather then "me-oriented". Like reddit but more personal.
  - mr_spothawk 10y ago
    sounds like G+
allannienhuis 10y ago
presenting social content in a different format would be interesting, but I've not seen any compelling options. But the issues of looking for approval and social status are social issues - not sure how a social network tool could avoid that. Isn't that what a lot of people's casual relationships are like? What do most people do at parties and social events in person - they talk about themselves and each other...
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  On Hacker News, for example, people don't talk about themselves, although they do like to get upvotes.
  - allannienhuis 10y ago
    but hacker news isn't really about social content. Some of that might creep in for some users, and yes the karma thing does pollute motivations for some, but I've never thought of it as a social network. Some networking is done here, but only indirectly I think. Maybe I'm not thinking about it right or use it differently than most :P
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      Yeah, it is not a "complete" social network, I was just using it as an example that there are places in which people aren't so narcissistic as in Facebook. See also Joel Spolsky on the topic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-communities-with-software/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-communiti...
      - lj3 10y ago
        People are narcissistic by design. Social Networks were created to harness that narcissism to make money. I argue that there are a lot of other 'social networks' on the internet in a technical sense. You had profiles and added friends and then sent things to them/chatted with them on AIM, LiveJournal, any of a number of message boards, blogs/comments, etc. The deciding factor between what came before and facebook and twitter is the ability to broadcast to the entire social network at once, so all of the world can see your brilliance! Feeding into that narcissism is the killer feature of modern social networks.
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      You have a point there. "Social content". What is "social content"? Is it people talking about themselves and what they think and showing pictures of themselves? Is that what you do with your best friends? You arrive at their houses and start talking about yourself without being asked?
      - allannienhuis 10y ago
        hmm. I think people expect their friends to do some posting about their life or interests on (our current) social networks - so they implicitly have permission to do so. We don't expect our friends to immediately start talking about themselves in-person, but I do think we expect our friends to talk about themselves and what's going on in their lives - it would be pretty shallow friendships if we only talked about the weather or the news headlines. Most good conversationalists are good at it because they explicitly draw the other person into talking about themselves and their interests. Whether things become narcissistic is more a factor of personality I think. Perhaps its more than that, though. A good conversationalist would steer the conversation to more interesting content - ie why he person is passionate about their hobby rather than just talking about their accomplishments. Perhaps we need to think about social network features that model what good conversationalists do? Not sure what that looks like though. [edit for typo]
0x445442 10y ago
The did, it was called Usenet and it was glorious.
- waqf 10y ago
  $$$ MAKE MONEY FAST $$$ What I mean to say is, Usenet's social model hardly prevented it from drowning in a sea of low-value content.
- ezdiy 10y ago
  If you want a "modern web" example, nntpchan - despite the name, its not related to usenet directly, only uses the same method of federated pub/sub replication.
stinkytaco 10y ago
This is what blogging was like, no? Pingbacks created a conversation among posts.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  Blogging is about the same as posting in your own "feed" on any social network. See, for example, the indiewebcamp[1] people, who are against "silos", as they call Facebook et al., but are recreating their same functionalities with personal blogs and a new version of Pingbacks called "webmentions". [1]: https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/
  - stinkytaco 10y ago
    But the pingback was more about making your blog post a comment on someone's post. So it was creating a conversation. I could read a post, respond to it on my blog and ping back to the original. That way my feed was a mix of the discussions I'm having with others as well as my own stuff. I suppose if you take away the "feed" element, you could call web forums and Usenet "social networking".
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      > But the pingback was more about making your blog post a comment on someone's post. That's what "webmentions" do. > That way my feed was a mix of the discussions I'm having with others as well as my own stuff. Here's something I like: everything you say is part of a public discussion, so you're talking alone, also comments have about the same weight as standalone posts, also outsiders can join the discussion, it isn't restrict to your current circle of friends.
      - stinkytaco 10y ago
        What you are describing has existed for years and we called it Usenet. Or a forum. Or a mailing list. I can accept that "social networking" is a bad term, but in popular usage it encompasses the "personal feed" almost by definition.
Kiro 10y ago
That's your dystopian description of the current state of social networks and not the reality.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  Well, it is impossible to fit the "reality" in a text comment, so yes.
cel 10y ago
With SSB, you could make a UI that renders the content in a different way, such as a HN-style thing, and use it on the existing network alongside people using other clients. The social aspect is important though because in this architecture what you see is determined by who you follow (and who they follow, etc.)
caspianm 10y ago
On Twitter and Tumblr you can make extra accounts to participate in discussions you're interested in, and select people to follow based on that, so the feed system is okay for talking about things other than yourself if the feeds don't include everyone you know by default. Tumblr has some pretty good discussion about movies and books. Twitter not so good for discussion because off the length limit, but there's plenty of people posting concise observations and jokes rather than posting about themselves. On both systems, people can reply to content from strangers, and there's lots of conflict arising from that. I do think Tumblr would be improved by making it easier to have discussions that don't go to all your followers by default, for example like on Twitter where if you tag people at the start of your tweet, it doesn't go into the main feed for your followers who aren't tagged. Or you can go all the way to partitioning a system into topics, as with Reddit. I wouldn't call that a social network though, you don't just casually start a conversation with people you've chosen to connect with, you start a conversation with a subreddit.

by fiatjaf 10y ago

mr_spothawk 10y ago

I'm all ears.

mypalmike 10y ago
Social networks could be topic-oriented rather then "me-oriented". Like reddit but more personal.
- mr_spothawk 10y ago
  sounds like G+

allannienhuis 10y ago

presenting social content in a different format would be interesting, but I've not seen any compelling options. But the issues of looking for approval and social status are social issues - not sure how a social network tool could avoid that. Isn't that what a lot of people's casual relationships are like? What do most people do at parties and social events in person - they talk about themselves and each other...

fiatjaf 10y ago
On Hacker News, for example, people don't talk about themselves, although they do like to get upvotes.
- allannienhuis 10y ago
  but hacker news isn't really about social content. Some of that might creep in for some users, and yes the karma thing does pollute motivations for some, but I've never thought of it as a social network. Some networking is done here, but only indirectly I think. Maybe I'm not thinking about it right or use it differently than most :P
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    Yeah, it is not a "complete" social network, I was just using it as an example that there are places in which people aren't so narcissistic as in Facebook. See also Joel Spolsky on the topic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-communities-with-software/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-communiti...
    - lj3 10y ago
      People are narcissistic by design. Social Networks were created to harness that narcissism to make money. I argue that there are a lot of other 'social networks' on the internet in a technical sense. You had profiles and added friends and then sent things to them/chatted with them on AIM, LiveJournal, any of a number of message boards, blogs/comments, etc. The deciding factor between what came before and facebook and twitter is the ability to broadcast to the entire social network at once, so all of the world can see your brilliance! Feeding into that narcissism is the killer feature of modern social networks.
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    You have a point there. "Social content". What is "social content"? Is it people talking about themselves and what they think and showing pictures of themselves? Is that what you do with your best friends? You arrive at their houses and start talking about yourself without being asked?
    - allannienhuis 10y ago
      hmm. I think people expect their friends to do some posting about their life or interests on (our current) social networks - so they implicitly have permission to do so. We don't expect our friends to immediately start talking about themselves in-person, but I do think we expect our friends to talk about themselves and what's going on in their lives - it would be pretty shallow friendships if we only talked about the weather or the news headlines. Most good conversationalists are good at it because they explicitly draw the other person into talking about themselves and their interests. Whether things become narcissistic is more a factor of personality I think. Perhaps its more than that, though. A good conversationalist would steer the conversation to more interesting content - ie why he person is passionate about their hobby rather than just talking about their accomplishments. Perhaps we need to think about social network features that model what good conversationalists do? Not sure what that looks like though. [edit for typo]

0x445442 10y ago

The did, it was called Usenet and it was glorious.

waqf 10y ago
$$$ MAKE MONEY FAST $$$ What I mean to say is, Usenet's social model hardly prevented it from drowning in a sea of low-value content.
ezdiy 10y ago
If you want a "modern web" example, nntpchan - despite the name, its not related to usenet directly, only uses the same method of federated pub/sub replication.

stinkytaco 10y ago

This is what blogging was like, no? Pingbacks created a conversation among posts.

fiatjaf 10y ago
Blogging is about the same as posting in your own "feed" on any social network. See, for example, the indiewebcamp[1] people, who are against "silos", as they call Facebook et al., but are recreating their same functionalities with personal blogs and a new version of Pingbacks called "webmentions". [1]: https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  But the pingback was more about making your blog post a comment on someone's post. So it was creating a conversation. I could read a post, respond to it on my blog and ping back to the original. That way my feed was a mix of the discussions I'm having with others as well as my own stuff. I suppose if you take away the "feed" element, you could call web forums and Usenet "social networking".
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    > But the pingback was more about making your blog post a comment on someone's post. That's what "webmentions" do. > That way my feed was a mix of the discussions I'm having with others as well as my own stuff. Here's something I like: everything you say is part of a public discussion, so you're talking alone, also comments have about the same weight as standalone posts, also outsiders can join the discussion, it isn't restrict to your current circle of friends.
    - stinkytaco 10y ago
      What you are describing has existed for years and we called it Usenet. Or a forum. Or a mailing list. I can accept that "social networking" is a bad term, but in popular usage it encompasses the "personal feed" almost by definition.

Kiro 10y ago

That's your dystopian description of the current state of social networks and not the reality.

fiatjaf 10y ago
Well, it is impossible to fit the "reality" in a text comment, so yes.

cel 10y ago

With SSB, you could make a UI that renders the content in a different way, such as a HN-style thing, and use it on the existing network alongside people using other clients. The social aspect is important though because in this architecture what you see is determined by who you follow (and who they follow, etc.)

caspianm 10y ago

On Twitter and Tumblr you can make extra accounts to participate in discussions you're interested in, and select people to follow based on that, so the feed system is okay for talking about things other than yourself if the feeds don't include everyone you know by default. Tumblr has some pretty good discussion about movies and books. Twitter not so good for discussion because off the length limit, but there's plenty of people posting concise observations and jokes rather than posting about themselves. On both systems, people can reply to content from strangers, and there's lots of conflict arising from that. I do think Tumblr would be improved by making it easier to have discussions that don't go to all your followers by default, for example like on Twitter where if you tag people at the start of your tweet, it doesn't go into the main feed for your followers who aren't tagged. Or you can go all the way to partitioning a system into topics, as with Reddit. I wouldn't call that a social network though, you don't just casually start a conversation with people you've chosen to connect with, you start a conversation with a subreddit.