[Air-l] social network migration

[Nancy Baym]

Data portability, yes. But in the ideal I'd prefer a version where I 
had all the info on a site *within my own purview* or at least open 
source and community-owned (vs. a site owned by others such as FB, 
NewsCorp., you name it) and could port it out to other sites in 
pieces at will. Wholesale taking one's profile elsewhere doesn't fix 
the problem of wanting to maintain differentiated presences on 
multiple sites. Though we tend to conduct our studies in either 
generic ('do you use social networking sites? yes or no') or 
site-specific ('what's happening on myspace?') ways, many people's 
experience is neither generic nor site-specific.



>That's why I'd argue for data portability, not aggregation. Allow my 
>to choose my own context for which to share my personal information. 
>If I tire of the culture at Facebook, I should be able to easily port 
>my profile to another site.
>
>No?
>
>On Jul 2, 2007, at 4:23 PM, '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
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