[Air-L] the growth of some groups and not others

[tom abeles]

Hi Murray

You raise an interesting issue that seems not to have been fully addressed since the early 70's with Caucus and EIES as early social networks coming from the old BBS systems. With increased connectivity and a proliferation of social networking sites, the problem has only become more complex.

a) The expansion has, in many ways reduced the personal information density- more "stuff" to filter through to get to personally important information
b) more fragmentation as each "group" remains conflicted between being open and wanting to keep value from dilution. One observation, here, is that many "groups" start out with high density and hopes and then gradually fade either as the old guard fades or moves on, taking its knowledge with it which either leads to no activity or a bunch of newbies starting over but from a different place
c) small groups form and become private.

thoughts?

tom

tom abeles

> Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:10:49 +0100
> From: murray.turoff at gmail.com
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] the growth of some groups and not others
> 
> The standard design philosophy currently being used in many social network
> systems is to encourage the user to sign into the site and duplicate
> functions like exchanging messages in different formats.  For many users
> this is too much a waste of time in that most important things are carried
> out by the user in their current message environment.  The addition of
> groups that social networks finally recognized (they existed in some systems
> in the 70's) as a key valuable addition to communication systems will spread
> and be better integrated in message services.  I also note that some social
> networks are making it easier to handle social network functions without
> signing in and leaving your normal environment.  Like many of you I
> currently am in 4 different network social systems and within groups within
> those.  It gets to be a real mess when one cannot easily move through the
> different environments by being able to do the same function in one way in
> one place.
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > Distinguished Professor Emeritus
> Information Systems, NJIT
> homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff
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