[Air-l] social network migration

[Michael Zimmer]

Returning to this discussion, Google is (surprise) working on a  
social networking platform called Socialstream, which would "draw  
content from a variety of sources. Socialstream would be based on a  
unified social network (USN), a single network that provides social  
data to other sites as a service. A service model allows many social  
networks to be linked together, letting them share both content and  
the nature of the relationships of the people who use them."

Not sure what will come of this...

Research site: http://www.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/M-HCI/2006/ 
SocialstreamProject/index.php
Demo video: http://video.google.com/videoplay? 
docid=-6610704975433050156&hl=en
Commentary: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/07/googles-social- 
networking-projects.html

-----
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Microsoft Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School
e: michael.zimmer at nyu.edu
w: http://michaelzimmer.org



On Jul 2, 2007, at 6:10 PM, Conor Schaefer wrote:

> I think that data portability would lead to aggregation and
> homogenization in the sense Gail was talking about. The mere fact that
> each site demands that a user reenter fundamental facts when  
> signing up
> gives the opportunity--and perhaps even increases the likelihood-- 
> of the
> user designing different personae for each site. It's this diverse  
> part
> of SNS that is so appealing to a lot of researchers, I think.
>
> For some reason, this aspect seems "new" and unique to technology to a
> lot of researchers; like this doesn't happen in face-to-face
> interactions, for instance. On this subject, can anyone point me to
> research which does draw parallels between the two paradigms?
>
> -Conor
>
> Michael Zimmer wrote:
>> 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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>>
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