[Air-L] What went wrong with Multiply?

[Thomas Jones]

I would offer that in addition to the dynamics that danah mentioned, I personally believe it is the way in which those dynamics are presented to the user. Part HCI, part social construct ("dynamics"). A friend of mine once told me that a solutions often lay in how you view the problem - similarly, interactions often lay in how we view the environment. Not exactly prophetic, but almost too simplistic.

As an example, I personally enjoy G+ as a SNS environment much more than Facebook. And this is likely bleeding over to different subject but the ability to segregate social circles is, in my opinion, what limits social interaction on Facebook - flexible privacy permissions is simply duct tape on a much more complex issue. In fact I would go so far as to say the problem isnt privacy of your information from people you know, so much as it is the stratified strength and magnitude of social circles, some which are not intended to overlap - think facebook vs linkedin as an exaggerated example. 

Im done rambling now :P


Thomas Jones
@othertomjones
http://theothertomjones.com


One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
-- Albert Einstein, On Education --




On Jul 21, 2011, at 7:29 PM, Dan Perkel wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:24 PM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z at danah.org> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> What folks never seem to remember in this space is that it's *NEVER* about
>> the features.  It's about the cultural dynamics.
>> 
> 
> I would amend that point by saying that the features are a part of the
> cultural dynamics, rather than separate from them. One question to ask is
> what is the "it" that we are talking about.
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------
> Dan Perkel
> PhD Candidate
> School of Information, Berkeley Center for New Media
> UC Berkeley
> http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dperkel
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> danah
>> 
>> 
>> On Jul 21, 2011, at 10:55 AM, Nicholas John wrote:
>> 
>>> I'm doing some historical work on social network sites using the Wayback
>>> Machine and I've come across a site called Multiply. Today Multiply is
>> much
>>> more about shopping than it is a full-blown SNS, but it's fascinating to
>>> look at what it was offering in 2004 - it's About page is basically a
>>> description of what we do on Facebook today.
>>> Most interestingly, though, is the level of granularity it offered in
>> terms
>>> of who could see our posts (not dissimilar to Google+'s circles, which
>>> everyone is so excited about in that it solves a problem in Facebook).
>> For
>>> each post you can specify who can see it at quite a remarkable degree of
>>> granularity (everyone; your network, your contacts, or a custom list). It
>>> also, in 2004, promises alerts when someone in your network does
>> something
>>> (i.e., a news feed).
>>> Was anyone here on that site in those days? Does anyone know what
>> happened
>>> to it given that they really seemed to have online social networking
>> fairly
>>> sussed seven years ago. I'd be very interested to find out...
>>> Thanks
>>> Nicholas
>>> _______________
>>> Dr. Nicholas John
>>> sociothink.com
>>> @nicholasajohn
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>> ------
>> 
>> "taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani
>> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
>> http://www.danah.org/
>> @zephoria
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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