After receiving my 15th request to be someone's friend at Multiply.com
Posted by David Weinberger
The feature I’d most like to see in any newsocial network: Import from some other social network. Get me out of the middle of re-re-re-re-confirming that I am so-and-so’s dear friend.
These social networks in my experience continue to be all maintenance and no value.
"all maintenance and no value" - it's a really provocative statement, and I don't completely disagree, but let me just put forward that maybe, for some, the value is IN the maintenance. Many products and services are valued for things other than their explicitly-offered benefits. These sites claim that you'll have a certain outcome by building up the network, and often you don't, but building up your network can be rewarding on its own - as a game, as a pastime, as a tool for connecting with folks who want to ask you about YOUR experience with the service, etc.
Claimed value and experienced value may differ for some users. Companies that get this, in general, have more opportunities than those that ignore it.
I agree that these kinds of social networks are "all maintenance and no value". I think it takes so much work to set up the social network that you actually forget how the network is supposed to aid you -- finding people/groups that have similar interests as your own.
However, I have always found that I find more contacts and 'social networks' through blogging. Far more than any online service geared to increase my 'social network'.
what is annoying is getting a friendster or orkut message from multiply, asking me to come there and sign up.
how is orkut even ALLOWING that to happen ?
I never gave my friend, on multiply, permission to make explicit my relationship with him on anything but orkut. all of a sudden, now Multiply has the data that he and I are connected ? sorry, but that is bullshit.
Ironically, this is happening BECAUSE Multiply has an import feature. You can hand them our Orkut password and they will automatically invite all your Orkut contacts. That's why everyone is getting spammed.
It's not so much just social networks that need import/export capabilities, but the social web as a whole. I think it'd be much cooler to have import/export for the social bookmark services (del.icio.us et al), Considering it's all pretty much the same data (URL, description, tags) and all available via RSS it shouldn't be too tough.
Find myself agreeing with the ``all maintenance and no value'' mantra. Seems I spend at least 10 times longer fartarsing about with these sites than actually using them for anything worthwhile.
It's not so much just social networks that need import/export capabilities, but the social web as a whole. I think it'd be much cooler to have import/export for the social bookmark services (del.icio.us et al), Considering it's all pretty much the same data (URL, description, tags) and all available via RSS it shouldn't be too tough.
Find myself agreeing with the ``all maintenance and no value'' mantra. Seems I spend at least 10 times longer fart-arsing about with these sites than actually using them for anything worthwhile.
It is interesting that "import/export" was seriously proposed as a solution without any apparent understanding for the inherent maintenance required with such a strategy for it to be of any long term use.
A solution which would dispose of such maintenance burdens for the user would have been some sort of opt-in "synchronization" between YASNS. However, given such centralized (ironically) YASNS' default proprietary nature, the development of such a feature is unlikely.
But there is a solution even better than that, which is opt-in _identity consolidation_
http://gmpg.org/xfn/and/#idconsolidation
In short, using XFN (nevermind Clay's straw man rants*), specifically the rel="me" feature of XFN 1.1 , a user can express in semantic terms that their website, their blog, and all their various YASNS profiles, all represent the same person.
This enables tools and services to treat their all their social network connections as part of one big distributed social network across all those different sites, without having to go to the trouble of keeping up with exporting/importing, or waiting for all those services to suddenly adopt some sort of automatic synchronization protocol.
Tantek
*Pending a more formal response, see Jonas Luster's thoughtful response to Clay's criticisms: http://www.jluster.org/node/278
It's obvious to me this happened because none of the IAs or developers involved (there *were* IAs, right?) bothered to flesh out a sufficiently granular use case detailing the import interaction in all its ramifications.
And that's fine, it's human. Happens to me all the time. I submit a provisional use case to my development team, and it gets sent back because I haven't foreseen some dependency or some cascade of events, and I refine and iterate, and we do it all again.
What's not OK is that this was actually allowed to go out live like this. As a recipient of a boxload of Multiply spam, I'm pissed off, and I was already not so sanguine about the YASNS as a segment. Like the man said, "I was quit when I came in here, I'm twice as quit now."
1. Steve Portigal on August 19, 2004 9:52 AM writes...
"all maintenance and no value" - it's a really provocative statement, and I don't completely disagree, but let me just put forward that maybe, for some, the value is IN the maintenance. Many products and services are valued for things other than their explicitly-offered benefits. These sites claim that you'll have a certain outcome by building up the network, and often you don't, but building up your network can be rewarding on its own - as a game, as a pastime, as a tool for connecting with folks who want to ask you about YOUR experience with the service, etc.
Claimed value and experienced value may differ for some users. Companies that get this, in general, have more opportunities than those that ignore it.
Permalink to Comment2. Azzari Jarrett on August 19, 2004 10:37 AM writes...
I agree that these kinds of social networks are "all maintenance and no value". I think it takes so much work to set up the social network that you actually forget how the network is supposed to aid you -- finding people/groups that have similar interests as your own.
However, I have always found that I find more contacts and 'social networks' through blogging. Far more than any online service geared to increase my 'social network'.
Permalink to Comment3. Sam on August 19, 2004 11:07 AM writes...
what is annoying is getting a friendster or orkut message from multiply, asking me to come there and sign up.
how is orkut even ALLOWING that to happen ?
Permalink to CommentI never gave my friend, on multiply, permission to make explicit my relationship with him on anything but orkut. all of a sudden, now Multiply has the data that he and I are connected ? sorry, but that is bullshit.
4. Raph Koster on August 19, 2004 12:51 PM writes...
Ironically, this is happening BECAUSE Multiply has an import feature. You can hand them our Orkut password and they will automatically invite all your Orkut contacts. That's why everyone is getting spammed.
Permalink to Comment5. Stewart Butterfield on August 19, 2004 6:07 PM writes...
Which is exactly why I railed against the idea of FOAF as an import/export format for YASNS interchange. Now you see????
;)
Permalink to Comment6. Alex C-G on August 20, 2004 8:29 AM writes...
It's not so much just social networks that need import/export capabilities, but the social web as a whole. I think it'd be much cooler to have import/export for the social bookmark services (del.icio.us et al), Considering it's all pretty much the same data (URL, description, tags) and all available via RSS it shouldn't be too tough.
Find myself agreeing with the ``all maintenance and no value'' mantra. Seems I spend at least 10 times longer fartarsing about with these sites than actually using them for anything worthwhile.
Permalink to Comment7. Alex C-G on August 20, 2004 8:36 AM writes...
It's not so much just social networks that need import/export capabilities, but the social web as a whole. I think it'd be much cooler to have import/export for the social bookmark services (del.icio.us et al), Considering it's all pretty much the same data (URL, description, tags) and all available via RSS it shouldn't be too tough.
Find myself agreeing with the ``all maintenance and no value'' mantra. Seems I spend at least 10 times longer fart-arsing about with these sites than actually using them for anything worthwhile.
Permalink to Comment8. Tantek on August 20, 2004 11:05 AM writes...
It is interesting that "import/export" was seriously proposed as a solution without any apparent understanding for the inherent maintenance required with such a strategy for it to be of any long term use.
A solution which would dispose of such maintenance burdens for the user would have been some sort of opt-in "synchronization" between YASNS. However, given such centralized (ironically) YASNS' default proprietary nature, the development of such a feature is unlikely.
But there is a solution even better than that, which is opt-in _identity consolidation_
http://gmpg.org/xfn/and/#idconsolidation
In short, using XFN (nevermind Clay's straw man rants*), specifically the rel="me" feature of XFN 1.1 , a user can express in semantic terms that their website, their blog, and all their various YASNS profiles, all represent the same person.
This enables tools and services to treat their all their social network connections as part of one big distributed social network across all those different sites, without having to go to the trouble of keeping up with exporting/importing, or waiting for all those services to suddenly adopt some sort of automatic synchronization protocol.
Tantek
*Pending a more formal response, see Jonas Luster's thoughtful response to Clay's criticisms: http://www.jluster.org/node/278
Permalink to Comment9. nicholas on August 20, 2004 12:06 PM writes...
i wrote about the multiply mails on my blog, and how it's a quasi-spam, annoying like one but legitimate as a regular mail.
http://www.nonlinearmatters.com/blog/2004/08/attack-of-zombie-friends.html
i'm brazilian, and it seems orkut's problems reached critical mass, my friends are leaving in droves.
Permalink to Comment10. Adam on August 20, 2004 5:30 PM writes...
It's obvious to me this happened because none of the IAs or developers involved (there *were* IAs, right?) bothered to flesh out a sufficiently granular use case detailing the import interaction in all its ramifications.
And that's fine, it's human. Happens to me all the time. I submit a provisional use case to my development team, and it gets sent back because I haven't foreseen some dependency or some cascade of events, and I refine and iterate, and we do it all again.
What's not OK is that this was actually allowed to go out live like this. As a recipient of a boxload of Multiply spam, I'm pissed off, and I was already not so sanguine about the YASNS as a segment. Like the man said, "I was quit when I came in here, I'm twice as quit now."
Permalink to Comment