[Air-l] social network migration
Nancy Baym
nbaym at ku.edu
Mon Jul 2 13:35:23 PDT 2007
The early data (about 200 respondents from 30+ countries) I've got in
a survey underway looking at friending on Last.fm suggests that there
are important differences in how people view their friends in
different social network sites and what information they want to
share. This does not seem to be site-specific so much as
person-specific (for instance, while one person may say "I know all
my MySpace friends f2f but will friend anyone on Last.fm," others
will say the opposite.)
There are also differences in what is even perceived as a social
networking site in the first place. To my surprise, a number of
people have commented in the last.fm forums in response to my survey
that they never thought of Last.fm as a social networking site
because of its central focus on music. From a definitional
perspective, however, it has all the hallmarks of a social networking
site (i.e. personal profile + friends list visible to others).
At the same time, I think the proliferation of these sites is
increasingly problematic. I see the solution as involving at least in
part the ability to import and export things from one site to another
without reentry. So, for instance, I think it's a huge step forward
that Facebook applications now let people import information from
other social network sites (Flickr, Last.fm...) into FB. Though, as
yet, the reverse is not happening.
>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
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