Social Networking, or "Spam me now!"

By 40564209

This article is a reflection on my experiences using a social and mobile computing tool. The intended audience is my peers and instructors, and, as such, it is assumed the reader has some understanding of concepts such as social networking and human-computer interaction. The goal is to detail my opinions, backed up by means of personal examples and previous research, on the aspects of the tool that I found to be most pertinent. These were: Effectiveness of the system (in the context of a social tool), and Longevity. That is, “does it do what I want it to do and what it is supposed to do?” and “how long am I likely to continue using it and how long can it last?” - both considered from a social software point of view. I chose to focus on the popular social computing tool, Facebook. I did this because I feel it represents most of the experiences users have with, and challenges faced by, social computing tools.

Facebook is a social networking website aimed at letting a user keep in contact with people he has a real world connection to, such as friends, co-workers, classmates, etc. People familiar with social networking sites will immediately be familiar with many of the features Facebook provides: A ‘friends’ list to store your contacts, a public profile containing information about yourself, a bulletin board for your ‘friends’ to post comments to, personal multimedia sharing, and a central ‘home’ page that provides you with updates on people interacting with you.

When I joined Facebook in early 2007, I was fairly new to the concept of social networking websites. I had used other such websites before, and was struck by how poorly they tended to form a community. Typically, individuals could communicate to each other, and leave public messages, but it was far too easy to be left ‘outside the loop’. From the moment I joined Facebook, I perceived a difference, which I put down to 4 factors:

1. Sub-sectioning the global community into ‘Networks’ based on real-world ‘location’, such as Australia or the University of Queensland networks. This system matching to real-world connection is a key Usability Principle¹ and Facebook manages to implement it quite well.

2. Topical ‘Groups’, set-up by, monitored, and used by actual users. Groups generally fall under 2 categories: discussion of a topic, and as an organisational utility⁵. You can easily see what groups your friends have joined, and any recent activity that has happened since you last visited the group. “Brilliant”, I said! “All these people communicating and socialising over serious or amusing issues.” It is interesting to note though, that a vast majority of groups have little to no interaction going on, with members that have simply joined as if making a statement of allegiance. It does seem a lot like spam, (especially when you have to trawl through search results over them) however it is definitely a form of social communication. In reflection, I have found that these ‘single-serve’ groups are actually the ones I find myself laughing, or talking about, with friends in real life.

3. A ‘News Feed’, that keeps you updated on your friends’ interactions. Now that is putting it simply, because this is a very powerful tool, and one I believe must be central for a social community to work. Original concerns about privacy and clutter² were addressed, and you can customise what you are updated about, who you are updated about, and who is updated about you.

Despite these improvements and my beliefs, I still find the News Feed to be unhelpful and full of clutter. This is partly due to the fact that the feed customisations set a limit at 30 people you want to hear more of, and 30 people you want to hear less of.

4. Facebook’s photo sharing is a very usable system; uploading is simple, quick, and gives feedback, and the comments system is neat. However the one feature that really makes this work, is ‘tagging’. It is the basis of a well structured system, where photos are no longer simply grouped by who took them, but on who is in them.

This does raise a problem of privacy though: if someone is tagged (either by himself or by someone else) doing something they shouldn’t be, then this immediately becomes available to anyone if the privacy settings are not changed. There are many incidents of this leading to people being fired from their work³, and there have been cases of photos being public despite Facebook’s security and privacy settings⁴.

So is this an effective system? I would say very much so, perhaps the most effective example of social networking out there. You’ll notice that the concepts I’ve mentioned above are nothing new, but what they are is incredibly well synergised. Everything links together: friends, photos, groups, events, etc. This is what social networking is about.

However, when I write this, why do I feel like I’m writing a tragic eulogy? When I joined, from the beginning I felt Facebook had a sense of fad about it. It’s a sentiment I’ve heard shared, and I notice it in the decline in user activity amongst my contacts. It has been reported that Facebook’s growth has been slowing⁸, and a google search provides plenty of blogs about ‘Facebook fatigue’ and the ‘fad’ slur.

There are just too many frustrations, chief among these, as well as chief among the tragedies, being what is referred to as “Application spam”. To cut a long story short, Facebook released an API Platform which anyone could use to create an add-on module for Facebook. It was hailed as revolutionary, and with Facebook giving complete economic freedom, everyone wanted a piece of the profits. The result? Tens of thousands of applications⁶, most using a variety of techniques to get you to invite as many of your friends as it could. This was often done by deception, tedious notification spam, and, since the July 07 release of the API, large amounts of forced emails and invites that it took Facebook until February to address⁷.

Final thoughts: As far as effectiveness as a social computing tool, it is an exquisite example, certainly a benchmark for social tools that will follow. As for its longevity though, exponential growth can mean exponential decay. In the way of social networks, the less I use it, the less inclined my contacts are to use it, and so on. It does feel as though the bubble is close to bursting. Will it pop anytime soon? Hard to say, though to steal a quote from Mark Evan’s blog⁹, “When parents and businesses start embracing [it], it’s probably the time for the new ‘bar’ down the street to suddenly get ‘hot’.”

References:

1. 1. D.A. Norman, "The Design of Everyday Things", Basic Books, 1988

2. 2. M. Zuckerberg, “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.”, Blog, 6 Sep 2006, http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208197130

3. O. Thomas, “Bank intern busted by Facebook”, Blog, ValleyWag, Nov 12 2007, http://valleywag.com/tech/your-privacy-is-an-illusion/

bank-intern-busted-by-facebook-321802.php

4. M. Liedtke, “Security Lapse Exposes Facebook Photos”, Associated Press, 24 Mar 2008, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ijANq3fmx9AZNNrf7Q1PwCN1cKUAD8VK51UG1

5. J. Seligstein, “The Group Dilemma”, Blog, Facebook, 9 Mar 2007, http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2249512130

6. “Facebook Analytics and Developer Services”, Adonomics, http://adonomics.com/leaderboard.php

7. P.C. Jeffries, “Application Spam”, Blog, Facebook, 21 Feb, 2008, http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10199482130

8. “Facebook ‘sees decline in users”, BBC News, 21 Feb 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7257073.stm

9. M. Evans, “Five Things That Could Kill Facebook”, Blog, 24 Jun 2007, http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/06/24/five-things-that-could-kill-facebook/