Social Software: Are We Who We Think We Are?

by Matthew Cross

1.0 Introduction
Social software is many and varying. Certainly there are thousands of different applications out there, all purporting to allow users to interact. It seems that these days there is a social application available for nearly every niche activity. Over the past few weeks I have interacted with many such types of software. My experiences with these were in general positive, however one thing did bother me throughout the experience and that was the way in which we represent ourselves online. In this paper I will explore this issue across a variety of social software systems and present my views on such matters.

2.0 Background
2.1 Twitter
Twitter; what are you doing? This, as many know, is precisely the question posed to users of Twitter. Now at first, the author perceived this form of micro-blogging to be little more than a simplified version of its bigger brothers, such as Blogger. This however proved to be exactly opposite, Twitter it seems satisfies the user, in that it allows the user to express ideas, not suitable for a fully fledged blog. Take for example the simple sharing of a video from youtube. This would, by and large, be quite a trivial thing to post on a blog, given the brevity of simply posting a link, but Twitter is almost perfectly suited to the task. Now I am certainly not advocating Twitter as a method for posting everyday mindless drivel, however I did find that it enriched my ability to share some things, which I may have otherwise not bothered with. Now certainly it can be said that delicious offers a similar system, but its problem lies in its limitation to bookmarks alone.

2.2 Facebook
Facebook is by far the social software in which I paid the most attention. Yes Facebook certainly has its flaws; in fact it seems with each new update users become more frustrated by how confusing it is becoming. Despite this, Facebook still provides one of the best user experiences I can recall. The fact is that stripped of all of the clutter of additional applications Facebook has a very useable interface. Its advantage lies in the fact that it strives to present a social interaction with people that is as representative of true conversation as possible, with users able to interact in many different ways. This in my belief helps to form an online community that is closer to that of offline.

2.3 LastFM
LastFM is a very different form of social software because one can make use of it with almost no input. The strength of LastFM lay in both its simplicity, and its impressive song recommendation algorithms. I did find that unlike Twitter and Facebook, that it LastFM placed less of an emphasis on active interaction. This did seem strange to me, however LastFM does provide a way for members to become of good standing and thus it is possible to enrich ones experience of the software [1] and encourage users to become more actively involved.

2.4 Identities
Given the aforementioned it may seem as though I have had nothing but good experiences with the social software I sampled. Well, it is correct that at face value there is essentially nothing of any major concern that I can say against these softwares. The problem is that, whilst I was able to interact, in my belief this interaction was somewhat skewed to that of real life. Even social software that tried very hard to create an accurate image of a persona, such as Facebook, provided me with only a representation of a person and not, in my view, a very accurate one at times.

3.0 Focus
The advent of Web 2.0 saw coincided with a massive increase the number of ways that people can communicate. These methods whilst not conceptually different to precious communication models [1], have dramatically changed the way people interact with one another. A great many people these days shun face to face interaction in favour of the digital kind, and certainly no longer do people need to have physically met in order to know one another. According to Dourish and Bly awareness requires knowledge of the people, events and interactions of people around us [2]. The focus of this article is on the people; do users act as they would in an online social setting as they would in a face to face situation, and hence do we as users form correct images of others we interact with in an online social setting. Thus can people be truly aware based on online interaction alone?

4.0 Reflection
4.1 LastFM
During my exploration of social software, one thing intrigued me very much. This was the willingness of users of programs such as twitter and LastFM to share what are, in some cases very intimate personal details, simply due to the nature of the medium on which they are shared. Taking a closer look at LastFM for instance, reveals what is essentially an advanced surveying system working in the background. Certainly very few would be willing to indulge a complete stranger to monitor them whilst listening to their music and then telling all the surrounding people what that is. The question beckons, why do people accept such an invasion of privacy when presented in a digital form, when most would recoil from the idea were it presented as a face to face system. In my view it is attributed mainly to the fact that “one feature of computer mediated technology is the ability to assume identities” [3]. It seems that the assumption of identity is enough to persuade users, who would likely not participate in another context, to allow such “without the usual assumptions and restrictions of face to face communication” [3]. This shows how the taking on an identity, which may or may not be close to accurate, acts as a buffer for people in situation in which they would normally feel uncomfortable.

4.2 Twitter
Another software system that was clearly an excellent piece of work, but somehow not quite right was Twitter. Twitters main problem is the way in which users interact with the system. The fact that twitter is primarily a one-to-many messaging method prompts user to share information that is not truly reflective of their social nature. This brings about the various users who, whilst they would not cause the conflict to social norms by say, calling all of their friends just to tell them they are “doing the dishes”, feel it is necessary to “tweet” about it. This causes a change in identity which in most cases is that of a broadcaster, this creates a feeling of anonymity and which, in correspondence to Milgrams viewpoint, provides users freedom from routine social ties [4]. Now I know that Twitter does support one-to-one interaction, but unless the user takes the inititave to interact using these features, they are likely to create an identity that is not true of the person behind it.

4.3 Facebook
Facebook in my view has tried very hard to be in line with Shirky's design principles[1]. The user is certainly given a good handle; their own identity. As stated by Facebook “requires all users to provide their real date of birth as both a safety precaution and as a means of preserving the integrity of the site. You will be able to hide this information from your profile if you wish” [5]. They are furthermore given good standing, with any reference to themselves linking back to the user, providing a history of their interactions. Certainly there are barriers of protection as users must in some cases make requests in order to be granted access to certain features. Finally it scales, as whilst users can gain huge amounts of friends, individual conversations are still the primary way of communication. So what then is the problem with Facebook. Well it has to do with the imperfection of the users handles. It seems that despite the fact that Facebook strives to ensure people create an online persona that reflects them accurately, it does not completely succeed. For instance, a friend of mine is listed as being engaged on Facebook. Now this is meant to be a bit of a joke, however to new users trying to develop some knowledge on my friend’s persona, this is indiscernible from fact. This shows how even very well implemented social software can still lead to failures in presenting a true image of a user.

5.0 Conclusion
Social software has certainly made much progress over the past few years. The birth of Web 2.0 saw a massive surge in the uptake of social software. It should be clear, however, that no social software can present a completely true representation of a person. Indiscretion about information revealed through social software can in fact be detrimental to the user’s social interaction in the real world. Just as in real life, people must make assertions of who the people they interact with really are. The fact it that the ability for to take on personas not entirely representative of themself is part of the reason social software has become so popular, just think of MMOGs. However it is important for users to be able to recognise that even in areas where the change is persona is not explicit, there is often an implicit difference from the offline user. Just as mobile phone users would not randomly dial numbers in order to make friends, it is my belief social software should not be used as a method for forming social relationships, but instead advancing them.

6.0 Bibliography
1. C. Shirky, “A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy,” 2003; http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html.
2. S. Viller, Introduction to CSCW, The University of Queensland, 2009.
3. S. Viller, CSCW Design Concepts, The University of Queensland, 2009.
4. S. Milgram, The Individual in a Social World: Essays
and Experiments, McGraw Hill, Inc., 1977.
5. Facebook, “Facebook,” 2009; http://www.facebook.com.
6. J.W. Sin-Hwa Kang, Sasi Kanth Ala, “Social Copresence in Anonymous Social Interaction Using a Mobile Video Telephone,” Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.