When Social Networks become a Nuisance

Posted by: Ian Angell

I’ve just logged off Facebook, having wasted nearly forty-five minutes. There were 27 requests asking to be my friend, but I only knew about half of them. I can’t imagine why the other half would want to be my friends.

There were stupid virtual gifts, offers of a virtual knighthood, adverts for stuff I wouldn’t want in a million years, tedious facile applications and surveys (do I really care what proportion of the brain-dead prefer Pepsi to Coke?). I’ve been shown lists of favourite books, and what passes for music: bands with daft names like Flatulent Freddie and the Snot Nosed Psychopaths droning some tuneless ditty.

Personally, I use Facebook as a private personal network. During the odd break I like to find out how ex-students are getting on with their lives. I’m looking for the odd short message telling me of how their lives/careers are progressing – the odd photo of their families or on vacation is fun. It’s perfectly OK to ask me for a reference (although strangely they seem only come in LinkedIn, not Facebook!) I am not interested in friends of friends; one degree of separation is as far as I want to travel. {The next 2 sentences were added after I read the comment from Govind.} One aspect of social networks that is often forgotten is exclusivity. Far from inviting everybody in, many network members want to keep everyone else out - and why not?

Yet most of what I see are lists of superficial facts, invites to parties (where they play the junk music), adolescent ‘I hate Manchester United’ jibes shared with the world, and facile comments about ‘what I’m feeling now!’ The scale of garbage postings seems to be increasing exponentially. Don’t people realise that this drivel is being read by HR departments – postings say far more about you than your CV ever does.

How do we filter out this overload? It seems we’ve lost track of what the network is for. If we’re not careful we’ll throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’m already seeing a sharp rise in postings like ‘X is withdrawing from Facebook until further notice.’ This is only to be expected when social networks become a nuisance.

The Web 2.0 Gold Rush

Posted by: Ian Angell

Everywhere I see major corporations frantically joining the rush to profit from Web 2.0. {What an awful term – it implies a new version, an upgrade, when nothing could be further from the truth}.

The mere mention social networks gets companies foaming at the mouth. Mickey Mouse start-ups are attracting investment from financial investors who really should know better. Yes there are a few good ideas out there, but Web 2.0 is not going to be populated by thousands of Facebooks. Many, nay most of these new applications are just plain daft. The Internet bubble rides again!

We’ve seen it with Second Life (SL), the 3-D virtual social interaction space. Businesses are buying virtual islands in SL to create ‘interactive branded experiences.’ A veritable business paradise? Not so! Of the tens of millions of registered users, only a few tens of thousands are active. SL is an untraceable source of spam. Malicious software can steal virtual property, corrupt data, falsify marketing information, vicious rumours circulate, and there is the possibility of money laundering. Never forget for every social network there is an antisocial one.

Web 2.0 is awash in litigation over design theft, and the infringement of intellectual property rights – the Scrabble spat with Facebook is a case in point.

And yet the mere mention of blogs, mashups, podcasts, web feeds, widgets, or wikis get businesses hyperventilating. Something wonderful will happen, and they want their share!

Yes there are fortunes to be made, but extreme caution is needed, and sensible choices made. Just diving into social networks is folly, because they are fundamentally anarchic and uncontrollable. 

In the frenzied rush for gold, the miners are blind to where the real money is being made. A lesson should be learned from the original gold rushes. In the first wave it was picks, shovels, pans and mules – supplying equipment and transport – that made the money. Very few of the miners ever struck it rich. This was followed by the WWW of the second wave: selling Whisky, Weapons and Whores, where the real fortunes were made.

Money makes the world go around?

Money makes the world go around. Oh no it doesn’t! It’s inertia that makes the world go around … until it stops.

Inertia! What a powerful influence, or at least that’s what John Donahoe, the new boss eBay, is hoping. Donahoe is raising eBay’s fees and changing its rules, and assuming that its clients won’t desert the auction site in their droves for another fleamarket.com. Some of the smaller players in this eBay ‘community’ are threatening a boycott this May Day. The activists claim that the site is favouring the big players to the detriment of the vast number of small timers.

The Internet is really fascinating. Why is it that one site (possibly two) rise to dominate each sector, and people stay loyal despite better offers appearing in the more boutique specialist competitors? Don’t give me that brand loyalty nonsense. Brand recognition, yes! Google, Amazon, eBay, Skype, Facebook/Myspace are the first points of call in their particular sectors, and so they rule their particular roosts. Do they give a superior service to their clients, or is it apathy or laziness that fuels this inertia? Is it an example of ‘better the devil you know’? Or is it the gravitational pull of a critical mass, preventing large enough numbers to break away to form a viable competitor?

Whatever the reason, it is only to be expected eventually that familiarity breeds contempt. Is eBay taking its community for granted? If so, they had better beware. Entropy is a permanent fact of every system. A ‘tipping point’ will eventually be reached where the system dives into decline, and users will move on to more favourable climes.

I wonder which of the Internet Big Boys will be the first to fail?