The Problem With Social Networks: When Worlds Collide
from the keep-'em-separated dept
There's a famous episode of Seinfeld where the character of George Costanza freaks out that his worlds are "colliding" when the woman he's dating starts becoming friends with his friends. It made for an amusing episode, but it is true that most people have separate "worlds" of people that they know -- and that can cause problems on social networks. Most social networks effectively treat every one of your friends the same. There may be some slight levels of differences, but there's still a lot of overlap. And that's troublesome when your college buddies know you as one sort of person and your work colleagues know you as someone else. As the article above notes, as more and more people get on Facebook, and more of these worlds collide, it actually may cause some people to stop using the social networks as much and to pull back from sharing certain bits of information that made the various systems fun in the first place. Next up: which social network will allow you to have totally different profiles depending on who's looking at the page?![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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Filed Under: seinfeld, social networks, worlds collide
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Re:
Facebook has already implemented friend lists to group your friends into subcategories. The feature was quietly announced in the last month or so. They've yet to allow users to customize privacy settings for particular groups, but that's in the works.
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This is not true for Pownce.
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Cory Doctorow
http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/blog/2008/01/cory_doctorow_on_why_facebook.html#more
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Students and Teachers
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That's a great idea
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Are we wanna-be 007's?
Why in the world would one be scared to be themselves in any situation? I know...fear of social rejection, insecurity. But perhaps these sites like Facebook really make us realize that who we are is unavoidable. And even if we say stuff like in the about me: "1st of all, I LOVE GOD! 2nd of all, I love beer" and put an obnoxious list of every band our friends have mentioned to us under our "music" it is irrelevant to how we live.
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When social networks collide
[sing along now...] Your Jobster profile's connected to your StumbleUpon profile, your StumbleUpon profile's connected to your Flickr profile, your Flickr profile's connected to your Digg profile...
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The Problem With Social Networks: When Worlds Coll
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Social Networks Will Adjust
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the network effect is wrong
I started using facebook in May 04. Back then, it was great and became even better as more of my college friends came on board. Within a couple years there were parents, professors, bosses, younger siblings and distant friends who I didn't want seeing my content. This drastically cut the utility of the site. No more sharing personal info. No more sharing phone numbers, correct email addresses, or anything that might actually be useful. Most of my friends replaced their revealing profiles with generic boilerplate and stopped visiting the site.
Here's what I think will happen: Facebook will become more like a directory: Lots of us will be infrequent users who share very little information but use the site to facilitate point-to-point contact. In its place will rise a bunch of subject/demographic/psychographic-specific walled gardens where we can all feel comfortable sharing info with a select group of people.
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When worlds collide
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If you dont have multiple accounts
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Connections and Collisions - Why Facebook Isn't fo
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And then there's the Second Life Aspect
But here's where it gets interesting.. if you dont want to be real public about your Second Life avatar - what do you do? Create a facebook account for that? It does get ridiculous at some point - we all have our professional, casual, school, and virtual sides, and maintaining separate spaces for each gets to be a headache. Hopefully FB or some entity will come up with a good solution...
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I'm on it.
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Yes, I am a heartless, soul-less bastard.
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Let Your Life Be ONE
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Enjoy the colliding worlds...
http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2008/02/magic-moments.html
Bye,
Oliver
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If you have a life where you can "just be yourself"... great. But it's naive to think that it is my choice. Friends/family/colleagues are audiences. All good communications are targeted to the audience.
While FB has added some features, I want the networks themselves to be separate. It's not just what I post either... it's what my friends post.
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Facebook blocks sucks
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Social network
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