Digital Media Buzz > Social Networking: A Separate Conversation

Social Networking: A Separate Conversation

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By Jason W. Bunyan

Neil Postman once said “that media tend to become mythic,” meaning that people are inclined to think of their technological creations “as if they were a part of the natural order of things … [which] is always dangerous because [they are] then accepted as [they are], and [are] therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control.” While social networks, as a technology, are still in their infancy, it could be argued that the medium is becoming mythic for some users. People are beginning to view social networks as cultural fixtures, imbue them with a measure of power and hold certain beliefs about them.

One concept that is symptomatic of this phenomenon is the conversation. In the past few years it has become popular to use this phrase to refer to the flows of information that move through social networks. Effectively reinventing the popular conception of social networks by associating them with a human, speech-based activity, the conversation has transformed the conception of the medium from websites that one signs up for into an activity that we are encouraged to join.

This trinity of ideas – the conversation, the call to adopt and the ‘lest we lose’ reasoning that fuels them – constitutes a gestalt that, when accepted without question, leads people to begin to disassociate themselves from the activity that takes place online. People begin classifying the medium as a separate entity because, in their opinion, it is always there: it’s a part of the natural order of things.

The conversation appears that much more convincing because of the number of people who have adopted social networks. Facebook and Twitter have an estimated 30 million users each, and ready-made social network provider Ning facilitated the creation of 4,000 networks each day in April 2009. The argument that follows is if social networks are arguably the de facto low-cost mediums through which online users share information with one another (email platforms aside), how can the conversation not exist?

Still, while this metaphor is evocative and the numbers are formidable, two facts remain unchanged: however else they may be used, web-based exchanges of information are an extension of human communication, and their existence and evolution will be guided by its users – provided they don’t relinquish this right by bestowing power on the medium and then forgetting, an act that is tantamount to embracing the television.

Becoming enraptured with the myth creates problems for social network creators and users. Network creators who undervalue the role of users’ inborn ability to socialize, or attempt to order users’ interactions, risk designing networks that are restrictive, redundant and short lived. While it is premature to discuss absolutes and best practices for such a young medium, what can be said is that users tend to view poorly functioning networks in the way that the Supreme Court justices view instances of obscenity: they know them when they see them and they respond unfavorably.

Individuals who run with these fallacies often contribute negatively to the web’s ecology. The ongoing creation of social networks creates a low content-to-noise ratio for users and network creators, consumes an increasing amount of server space that may well be contributing to the Icarus Effect, and has left network creators less concerned with curatorial, journalistic and entrepreneurial sensibilities.

While there is no preexisting protocol for addressing these issues, moving forward, any effective efforts will need to be infused with a heightened sense of new media history, personal and social responsibility regarding content creation and the skillful development and use of technology.

Exercising futility
In a one-paragraph literary forgery called On Exactitude in Science, Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges describes a desert kingdom in which the art of cartography had been perfected. To increase the precision of their maps, the empire’s cartographers strove to create them on a scale that was closer to reality. They soon produced a map of one of their states that was so large that it occupied an entire province. When that scale was found unsatisfactory, the cartographers developed a map with a scale of 1:1, and the totality of the map covered the entire empire point for point. Borges then describes the fate of the cartographers’ works:

“The following generations, who were not so fond of the study of cartography as their forebears had been, saw that that vast map was useless, and not without some pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the inclemencies of sun and winters. In the deserts of the west, still today, there are tattered ruins of that map, inhabited by animals and beggars; in all the land there is no other relic of the disciplines of geography.”

Though On Exactitude discusses matters of cartography, the situations set forth in the story are analogous to those experienced by social network creators. Online social networks are designed to approximate interpersonal dynamics that we encounter in real time. Companies expand and modify their social networks to create better experiences and remain relevant. Creators who are unable to strike a proper balance between skillful approximation and replication of true interaction may have short-lived success, but when the next generation of users emerges and finds their network’s functionality lacking or restrictive, network use declines, and what was once an active community becomes a carapace of old photos, outdated personal information and the occasional spammer or late adopter.

Individuals’ reasons for creating social networks are more varied, but often include the desire to get into business, create groups that focus on a topic or to lifecast. The overabundance of personal social networks, meanwhile, generates informational dross and may well be contributing to the Icarus Effect.

The economy is partly to blame. Altruists aside, most of us find social networks appealing because of what they appear to be able to do for us. Social networks appear to be able to earn revenue, offer entry into the market without personal sacrifice or front-end investment (which encourages impulsivity), and represent a way to connect with people and/or practice user engagement without any additional effort.

These assumptions about networks are true in one sense and misinformed in another. It is possible to enter the social network space with little to no front-end monetary investment. As Clay Shirky explained during his Filter Failure talk at 2008’s Web Expo 2.0 NY, the web’s publishing structure is the first departure from the high, front-end investment economic model since the invention of movable type. Publishing is expensive on the front end, and publishers recoup these costs through their sales. The Internet makes curation less important. In this way, this assumption is correct.

However, it is a mistake to conclude that network-based efforts require no front-end investments at all, because the development and maintenance of social networks has several non-monetary costs. If one seeks notoriety, then knowledge of curation and the ability to sell people on the idea of joining your aggregation platform can’t be unimportant. Even if the objective is not gaining mass readership, at its most basic level, social media community management is like being a socialite in the Victorian Era: expect to write often. That cost alone accounts for why so many abandoned networks occupy server space.

While it is true that failing networks slowly disintegrate and server space is regained, this disintegration can take years and, even as the networks falter, multitudes of new ones appear in their place. While we have not noticed any effect on our servers yet, it is not possible to continue this way forever.

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