ON A DOWNSIDE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

IN THE SOUP

Jared Sandberg, at the Wall Street Journal has penned a timely article titled "OMG-My Boss wants to Friend me on my Online Profile".  He explains:

"These networking sites assist existing social relationships, letting people easily plan events, share pictures and keep up-to-date with far-flung friends.

Once they penetrate the office, however, such sites can create awkward moments, particularly with colleagues who commit the social felony of attempted hipness. Dare I say, "Whatup, homey?"

When it comes to the boss, there is a real dilemma. You're caught between a career-limiting rejection of virtual friendship or a career-limiting access to photos of yourself glassy-eyed at a party..."

"Like email and "buddy lists" before them, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace provide a definition of the word "friend" so expansive that it includes perfect strangers.

Yet, strangers are the easy part. It can be a lot creepier to interact intimately with someone you sort of know than someone you don't know at all."

Here's the money quote:

""All these social relationships -- apples and oranges -- are getting crammed into one category of friends," says Tom Boellstorff, associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, who is writing a book on the virtual community Second Life."

Unlike Second Life, all the Social Networks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo et al, along with their "short-form" cousins like Twitter, Pownce, etc., make establishing one's REAL identity as the online persona, a pre-requisite.

This means that once the community expands beyond one's close-knit friends and/or family, it does raise additional complications.  Here's how I described it a few weeks ago:

"And as Seinfeld's George Costanza put it so well in the immortal "Pool Guy" episode, Facebook makes my "Worlds Collide*", whether I like it or not.  That's the second thing that most grown-ups have to come to terms with about Facebook."

The next phase of these social networks, or "social utilities", as Facebook likes to call itself, will have to offer more flexibility in compartmentalizing various identities and/or roles a person plays in real life (or "RL" as we say in Second Life).

While we may very well be in the throes of Web 2.0, we need to remind ourselves that we're still very much in Social Networks 1.0.

Comments

[Master William]

Have you played around with the 'Limited profile' feature? It isnt granular enough, but it goes some way to solving this problem.

[Farhan]

Great post.

The limited view feature on something like Facebook has one problem, people know their seeing a limited view.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to define what people can see by the way they know you? So people you've worked with can't see stuff that you've marked as strictly for friends.

[Perry Blacher]

I totally agree with you Michael - one definitely needs to be able to filter messages to different audiences

That said, I find there is benefit in having a view of professional contacts one knows less well interacting with their close friends and family (such as in 'throwing food' at each other). It removes some degree of distinction/hierarchy and gives both parties context for a closer relationship than they could rapidly establish offline