Saturday, 10 July 2010
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
The spectrum of networks
In August I'm going to be on a panel at the BlogTalk conference where we shall be discussing the differences between social and conversational networks. This blog post is an attempt to clarify my thinking and get some definitions out there.
We all have a rough idea of what makes a social network. For me the important elements are:
Neither extreme is better than the other and individual users may need to use a service in ways that defy the expectations of the service's creators. This leads to the situation where a conversational network like Twitter has protected accounts and a social network like Facebook lets you publish status updates that the whole world can see.
This is just a model, a way of looking at the world, but it has interesting implications.
For example the model shows me that I use Flickr more than PicasaWeb or Facebook photos because I mostly desire a conversational photo-sharing experience. I want people to aggregate/reuse/remix my photos so I use a Creative Commons license and join interesting groups that juxtapose my photos with other people's work or encourage blogs (like Global Nerdy or Londonist or martinfowler.com) to embed them.
Another interesting implication is that whilst most of the interesting people and most of the web's creativity is at the conversational end of the spectrum, most of the people are at the social end of the spectrum. This intriguing contrast was first raised by my colleague Paul Adams. He pointed out that the vast majority of people don't want to be on public display and this 1% rule leads to services where only a few create content which a lot more share/curate and the vast majority consume.
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We all have a rough idea of what makes a social network. For me the important elements are:
- Symmetric relationships
- Expressing connections with people you already know
- Messages default to private
- A strong sense of who can see your data and in what context
- Asymmetric relationships
- Following people you find interesting even if you don't know them
- Messages default to public
- Your data ends up in various different contexts and may be aggregated/remixed/reused all over the web.
Neither extreme is better than the other and individual users may need to use a service in ways that defy the expectations of the service's creators. This leads to the situation where a conversational network like Twitter has protected accounts and a social network like Facebook lets you publish status updates that the whole world can see.
This is just a model, a way of looking at the world, but it has interesting implications.
For example the model shows me that I use Flickr more than PicasaWeb or Facebook photos because I mostly desire a conversational photo-sharing experience. I want people to aggregate/reuse/remix my photos so I use a Creative Commons license and join interesting groups that juxtapose my photos with other people's work or encourage blogs (like Global Nerdy or Londonist or martinfowler.com) to embed them.
Another interesting implication is that whilst most of the interesting people and most of the web's creativity is at the conversational end of the spectrum, most of the people are at the social end of the spectrum. This intriguing contrast was first raised by my colleague Paul Adams. He pointed out that the vast majority of people don't want to be on public display and this 1% rule leads to services where only a few create content which a lot more share/curate and the vast majority consume.
In fact this isn't a weakness of the model but a strength because that's the world we live in.
References and inspirations:
References and inspirations:
- The phrase "conversational network" comes from this Jaiku thread.
- A Buzz thread where Jonas Nockert points out that, given time, conversational networks drift towards the social side of the spectrum.
- Fambit is an example of a service that occupies the social end of the spectrum.
- A Buzz comment wherein Brian Cronmiller independently discovers the same phenomenon
- Results from a South Korean study which point out that the Twitter network isn't structured like a conventional social network
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Sunday, 6 June 2010
Sunday, 30 May 2010
The Wandering Book
A while ago, Enrique, set up the Wandering Book as a means of capturing the zeitgeist of the software craftsmanship movement. The idea is that a moleskine notebook wanders between people who think of themselves as members of this community. These people then have a week to contribute some useful insight before passing it on.
I'm guilty of taking significantly longer than a week before passing it on. My contribution is below.
What have you made recently?
Whenever software craftspeople gather that's one of the questions I'd like us to ask each other. I'd also like us to ask:
- what are you making?
- what do you want to make next?
- what have you learned from the things you made?
These are some of the questions that get to the heart of what we do.
We make software: code, databases, user interfaces, etc. We do it all. We may not be able to match the experts in each domain but we can make complete software all on our own.
I'm not talking about the artefacts of your day job or the things your team built. I'm talking about things that matter enough to you, that you created them in your own time and for your own reasons. These things you choose to make define the borders of your craft.
Even though I firmly believe that deliberate practice builds skill I don't think it's sufficient unless you also make things. In the same way I think that our current idea of software craftsmanship is insufficient if we're going to create a healthy community rather than another hollow buzzword.
Recently I've been thinking about the idea of a "generative community." This is a group of people united by overlapping values that lead them to create things that affect the real world (this may be software, devices, conferences, websites, etc) rather than just talk and think about making things.
I'd like our little community to be generative in the same way that Christopher Alexander wanted patterns to be generative. And I'd like you, the reader, to help make this happen.
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Monday, 24 May 2010
Joining the Social Web team
What has two thumbs and is joining the Social Web team at Google? Me.
I'm going to be one of the Developer Advocates based in the London office. I'll be looking after all things related to 'social' and the social web in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
I plan on spending a lot of my time listening to and learning from people outside the company. In fact when I try to describe all the facets of this job I tend to point people to Christian Heilman's book or Dion Almaer's blog post or Simone Brunozzi's blog post.
The social web is bigger than any one product or company. That's why my job is going to be as much about helping to grow the social web as it will be about helping developers to use Google APIs. So if you're doing something interesting with the social web in EMEA and you think Google can help then send me an email. I'm ade at google.com.
I'm also, to quote John Panzer, "a cluster of heterogeneous identifiers." You can follow most of them on Buzz: http://www.google.com/profiles/adewale#buzz
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I'm going to be one of the Developer Advocates based in the London office. I'll be looking after all things related to 'social' and the social web in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
I plan on spending a lot of my time listening to and learning from people outside the company. In fact when I try to describe all the facets of this job I tend to point people to Christian Heilman's book or Dion Almaer's blog post or Simone Brunozzi's blog post.
The social web is bigger than any one product or company. That's why my job is going to be as much about helping to grow the social web as it will be about helping developers to use Google APIs. So if you're doing something interesting with the social web in EMEA and you think Google can help then send me an email. I'm ade at google.com.
I'm also, to quote John Panzer, "a cluster of heterogeneous identifiers." You can follow most of them on Buzz: http://www.google.com/profiles/adewale#buzz
Add comments on Buzz
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