Creeva’s World 2.0

Pic­ture from here

I was lis­ten­ing to the last weeks episode of Net@Night and they were com­plain­ing that the Twit­ter com­mu­nity has become frag­mented.  This is true in the online world, as well as the offline world.  We are all not friends.  Some­times I think what you read, lis­ten to, watch, or have to say is utterly idi­otic and rep­re­hen­si­ble.   I’m sorry.   I do.   I also know that some of you think the same things about me, espe­cially those that are com­pletely fed up with me.

We call places like Myspace, Face­book, Twit­ter, Flickr, etc.  social net­works.  They are and they are not.  If you con­sider High School an exper­i­ment in social net­work­ing I guess they are social net­works.   I pre­fer to think of them as “Social Plat­forms”.   These are sites and appli­ca­tions that allow you to be social, but you don’t have to be.   I enjoy going to a movie with some­one else and don’t really enjoy going by myself.   That doesn’t mean there aren’t peo­ple out there that don’t enjoy going by them­selves.   Some peo­ple join social net­works for the games, some for the func­tions, and yes most for the social aspect and the abil­ity to con­nect with people.

I’ve writ­ten before that I use dif­fer­ent social plat­forms in dif­fer­ent ways.  Some com­mu­ni­ties, like twit­ter, I take an active role and par­tic­i­pate in, oth­ers I hang back and show up when I receive a com­ment on some piece of work I’ve com­mented on.   I just don’t have time to be a good com­mu­nity mem­ber and inter­act exclu­sively (or a lot) on the lit­er­ally hun­dreds of social net­work sites I belong to.  Giv­ing the lack of time in being able to deal with all of them, I write once and post every­where.  I deal with com­ments and such.

I won’t add you to my friends list if I haven’t dealt with you in some sort of capac­ity.  I add you if I’ve met you through online gam­ing, real life meet­ings, or I’ve had some sort of con­ver­sa­tion with you.   I won’t add you if you thought I look inter­est­ing and just want to chat (don’t worry I’m not request­ing friend­ship form you if you look inter­est­ing either).   Heck I don’t even like some of the net­works I’m a mem­ber of.  What does this mean though?

Does it mean I’m not net­work­ing socially?   I am and I’m not.   I’m hang­ing out with friends or exchang­ing ideas with peo­ple I know.   If your com­ing along for the ride, more power to you.  I’m not going to these just to meet you, some unknown per­son to me.   Until I know you I don’t want to net­work with you.

What does this mean in gen­eral?  I’ve pigeon holed myself into these social plat­forms.  I’ve become cliquish in a way that also existed in high school.   Just because I haven’t wel­comed you with open arms doesn’t mean I refuse to get to know you, it just takes time.   This is what hap­pens to the splin­tered groups amongst all of these social plat­forms.  They have their own secret hand shakes and com­mu­ni­ties that exist on the plat­form.   This is actu­ally quite a good thing, this is how you ful­fill the niche mar­ket.   One size doesn’t fit all.  I do believe your data and the data explic­itly shared with you should be able to be moved to another plat­form, data should be open and you should be able to make your own deci­sions over the data and meta data you cre­ate.     Splin­tered com­mu­ni­ties online just show us the social model that we have in the real world can repli­cate and exist online.

Because online com­mu­ni­ties begin to form and evolve organ­i­cally the same way they do in meat space, we know that they are real true com­mu­ni­ties.   They aren’t Utopian soci­ety love-ins.  Just because your friends with Bob and Jane and I’m friends with them doesn’t mean we have any­thing in com­mon to talk about.  Per­son­ally I have issues with Bob and Jane on some things, what if those are the things that you have in com­mon­al­ity with them?  I would then hate you.   I don’t want to hate, but I don’t want to get to know you either.     That’s not a bad thing.  Like real life we need to get to know each other first.   You don’t give every­one on the street you meet your phone num­ber — why would you add them to your friends list.

It’s not nec­es­sar­ily about hid­ing infor­ma­tion from them.  There are a lot of peo­ple like myself who lit­er­ally broad­cast their infor­ma­tion broadly and openly across the inter­net.   You really aren’t gain­ing too much beyond more access to direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion to me by being on my friends list.   I think these leads us to rethink the idea of friend lists.

Now go friend me on every pos­si­ble social net­work you find that has a Creeva.