[Air-l] social network migration

[Conor Schaefer]

Hear, hear! This is spot-on, in my opinion. However I must add that 
aggregators /will /be developed and employed, despite the glaring 
drawbacks Gail's mentioned, but that this process of aggregation will be 
countered with a continued profusion of new social networking sites. A 
fundamental attribute of these SNSs is that they are a "network," and as 
such cannot possibly accommodate "the whole." Remember the fuss when 
Facebook opened up, first to high school students, then the public? This 
was obviously to counter the growing userbase of MySpace, but Facebook 
users cherished its stonewalled nature, for whatever reason (I don't see 
a need to get into that right now; I'm sure the listserv has addressed 
it sufficiently in other contexts).

I know my point is primarily semantic here, but I find it very important 
in terms of system theory. The network, especially in this context, is a 
very abstract concept, but nonetheless I do not think its aspect of 
being limited in applicability and diffusion can be altered; even if it 
could, I do not think the population or userbase of these SNSs would 
placidly accept the "homogenization," as Gail so strongly put it.

-Conor

'Gail Taylor wrote:
> I am hesitant to say 'yes' to the suggestion there should be a way to aggregate social networking sites. I think it would lead to homogenization of practices for the user, who is currently having a 'multi-cultural' experience interacting with others in various online spaces. For example, the culture of Facebook is similar, but also different, than what one might expect hanging out in MySpace or other product that enables networking with others. This approach to aggregating processes is also one that decontextualizes information that is extracted from other souces, as opposed to allowing the user to interact in an environment where the information would be contextualized. There would be advantages and drawbacks to this approach. Depending on the knowledge and expertise of the people developing the aggregator, the program could be great or not so great for the end user.
>
> /Gail
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed.
> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
> Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student
> Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant
> Library & Information Science Research Assistant
>
> "Technology enables man to gain control
> over everything except technology." -- 
> Unknown
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: 
> http://www.aoir.org/
>
>