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Sorry, but if she has so much deep understanding of social networks why isn't she creating her own social network? Writting as a skill focused on one subject i

• fiaz 18y ago
  Sorry, but if she has so much deep understanding of social networks why isn't she creating her own social network? Because her interest is in the academic studies of social networking and how the current and future generations use them (something that is lacking in academia and needs more attention). If her interest were in creating a business around a web application that has a central theme of social networking then I think your question would be more applicable to danah. You could ask the same question of Duncan Watts as well, but again, he is an academic who now works for Yahoo!
  • volida 18y ago
    From what I know social networking was a subject in academia for more than 50 years.
  • volida 18y ago
    The best way to understanding something is by creating it.
    • bbgm 18y ago
      Not necessarily true. To really get a fundamental understanding of a phenomenon, you do not have the time to build it and often you don't have the inclination. Nothing wrong with that. It's up to others to take that research, distill it and build solutions.
    • mechanical_fish 18y ago
      The world needs both creators and analysts. Both kinds of people suffer from a problem of limited perspective: The analyst spends so much time above the problem that she may miss the aspects that are only visible from the inside... but the creator is stuck inside and doesn't really have the chance to look at her creation dispassionately from a distance. Also, there's no guarantee that the designer of a thing has any understanding of it at all. That's pretty much the essence of the theory of evolution. I wouldn't argue that the design of social networks is a totally mindless process of variation followed by selection, but it certainly does involve a lot of trial and error. I'm not sure that the designers of, say, Craigslist have much better understanding of why it works than anyone else does. They just happen to have made some initial choices that worked, and when they made changes they used feedback to guide them toward what their users liked. That's a rational process, but it doesn't necessarily reflect understanding.
      • volida 18y ago
        Trial and error involve a heavy amount of analysis. And as far as I know this is what happens in successful startups. So, I can't see how any creator doesn't have the analytic-side in him/her.
  • Alex3917 18y ago
    There are a bunch of interesting papers that have been written on these topics. Cornell has been having a series of symposia and lectures over the last three years about the social science of online networks and communities. Some of the speakers/papers have been really good. http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0508/events_06.html http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0508/events_06.html Most of the papers aren't linked to, but you can at least find the speakers and then Google their home page or look for the papers directly on JSTOR or whatever.
• neilc 18y ago
  if she has so much deep understanding of social networks why isn't she creating her own social network? Does the world really need yet another social network? There is value in both people who do, and people who analyze. In my eyes it's just a PR move. I don't think you understand MSR's mission.
  • deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  • volida 18y ago
    Does the world really need yet another social network? Convince first yourself, then trying convincing me.