Andy Mitchell

The current crop of social networks are failing. They are not compelling enough to make us use them to their full potential; because they can neither convey nor stir emotion.
(Note: This is really about true ’social life’ services, rather than utility services like LinkedIn)

And that seems strange, given most social networks represent my friends and relationships: the basis for most of our emotions and activities.
The best effort in this field, Facebook, leaves me numb. It reduces friendships to lists and statistics. It can even induce guilt, by encouraging you to look at photo’s of which you had no part. The computer strips friends of their personality, to the point that you no longer associate their social network representation with a real person. They become little more than virtual possessions.

Of course, this largely only affects friends that you cannot see so often.
But that opposes the true benefit of social networks: that they maintain ties with people irrespective of geography or time; reminding you of the good old days, and helping facilitate future events.

For a social network to succeed at doing this, all your friends and peers must utilise it whole-heartedly. And for that to happen, it must be compelling.

What would make me want to use a social network?

• The Human Touch
  A social network is nothing but a collection of people, and it should never let you forget that. I want easy interaction - the definition of human - via inbuilt instant messaging and email. I want ‘impact’, I want it to evoke strong emotions about people in my network. That means not just photos and stories, but video, music and audio. I also want spontaneity, but social networks discourage this. They permanently store everything, forcing you to think about the impact of what you say. Such whimsical thought is a core part of the human touch.
• Remembering Society
  We tend to naturally filter; either as a defence mechanism or a bonding mechanism. All contacts are not equal. We meet and get on with many people, but tend to compartmentalise them into manageable groups. Social networks are not good at this.
  I hesitate to post comments to Facebook, as it will be made public to all my contacts, whereas it will only be appreciated by a small group (and may even be offensive to others). Groups also strengthen bonds; a photo that can be seen by everyone is impersonal, whereas a photo that is only available to a select few is a meaningful token.
  There is also a question of your entitlement to participate. If you’re invited to read someone’s story, or to see their photo, you relish it. If you merely stumble upon it, you no longer feel a part of it. You become disconnected. (Note: that does not mean you should ‘invite’ individuals - simply allowing only some groups access has the same ‘validating’ effect).

Enough high-level, what sort of features would that make?
(This is not an exhaustive list, the devil is always in the details…)

• Seamlessly provide rich media
  Text and photos do not have sufficient impact. People should be encouraged to share videos of events, music that captured a mood, and personal touches, like a voice message. Combinations, such as music over video, have even greater effect. When a person is mentioned, this media should be presented as a montage to evoke strong memories of your relationship with them.
• Inbuilt interactivity
  Currently Facebook will not let me instant-message my friends, nor will it let me easily communicate with them through GTalk, AIM or MSN. This dehumanises your network, but also misses another important element: instant messaging is private, allowing a far more relaxed and natural conversation than public comments.
• Automatically pull people around ‘things’
  For photos/music/videos/etc., a social network should pull in everyone that is mentioned. E.g., if an instant-message conversation is started, and ‘Tom’ is mentioned, then Tom’s photo should appear, and he may be invited to join in.
• Encourage expression and spontaneity
  Twitter excels in capturing the offbeat, largely by accepting input from wherever you happen to be (your browser, your instant messenger and your mobile phone). More importantly, it is the personal stories and how ‘things’ make people feel (e.g. an old photo) that are truly relevant. By this point, you’re no longer reminiscing known facts, you are sharing new emotions and redefining relationships.
• Promote new relationships between strangers, based on a human connection
  A good example being where two strangers are in the same photo, as they clearly move in similar groups.

Most importantly, I want a social network to augment my life; not to be a second life which needs maintaining through the artificial realm of my computer. In fact I want to forget my computer is there. I simply want the most minimal barrier possible between me, and the things that matter (friends and peers).

Update 04/03/2008
In the last year Facebook has come a long way. Either that or I’ve changed my expectations of it. I now infrequently check it to see news, photos & videos of friends; and more often, social events - and that satisfies me. Of course, with the introduction of Facebook Apps (after this post was originally written), Facebook has diluted from a pure representation of friends to something very noisy, but Apps now seem to have fallen from grace, and it’s returning to a more useable environment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under Vision.