If you are a user of a social network, you aren't interested in whether or not it makes money, you just want it to do whatever it is you need. This may seem obvious, but I think it poses a problem for social network "owners" - users will just go off somewhere better on a whim (as happened with MySpace). Stuffing the network full of advertising, even if that were a viable business model, is not appealing to many users either.
Of course, for a user it is easy to say what's right about a social network. It should enable you to do what it is you want to do, easily, without distractions but with "targeted serendipity". I am increasingly aware that the power of the internet is not to do with speed - these days, if there is a world-shattering event or someone famous dies, I duck. First Twitter, then blogs, are instantly filled with many identical observations. In my opinion, there is no news that can't wait for a day to be read at leisure in the newspaper. I, like everyone else, am very busy so I don't want to read the same thing over and over again, usually with no added value or insight to the other people's posts.
So, what the internet is good for is filtering. This is why for me, the best social networks are Friend Feed and Nature Network, supported by an RSS reader (Google Reader), Twitter, and, recently, this Typepad blog. Other people will prefer other social networks depending on their needs. There is no relationship, from the user perspective, with the number of people on a network and its success. What is important to the user is the quality of the other users, not the quantity. That way, you can have what I've called here "targeted serendipity", eg "I know I like Bernadette's book reviews so even though I've never heard of this author I'll read this book on the basis of her review" or "I really don't need to add another blog right now to my reading list but Kerrie recomends Margot's blog, so I'll take a look" (that's how I discovered one of my very favourite blogs, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist).
Why do I like the networks that I like?
Friend Feed is a microblogging service that, unlike Twitter, allows you to aggregate posts into groups or "rooms" based round a common interest. Friend Feed also allows you to integrate much of your online activity into one place (your profile), and to see other people's activities on those platforms. If I don't use any of the 40 or so websites that FF supports, but I am interested in you and you do, I can use FF to see your activity on those platforms. If I don't like your contributions to FF, I can block you specifically so that I don't see anything you write. If I visit another social network so don't want that duplicated on FF, I can block that network. The end result is a highly personalised web service which I primarily use to discuss books and reviews of those books with a small group (172 at last count) of people round the world who (mostly) like the same type of book.
Nature Network is a group of blogs and forums whose content is entirely provided by users, most of whom are scientists or interested in science communication of some kind. it is free to use. It is not as technically sophisticated as some of the other platforms, but its main pleasures are the concentration of scientifically minded people who share interesting opinions, and the personalities of those people, most of whom are charming, witty, argumentative (in the nicest sense of the word!), creative and friendly. What NN lacks in technical sophistication it more than makes up for in its customer service: the NN team of about half a dozen publishers, editors, community managers and programmers are always at the end of an email if anything goes wrong, and regularly take part in the conversations. What a breath of fresh air in an increasingly "outsourced" world, to know that one can ask Lou, Matt, Jo or Ian (say) something, and get a thoughtful answer from a real person.
Google Reader. This isn't a social network really, though it tries to be. It is the way in which I read and comment on blogs - all the blogs I regularly read are delivered to one website (Google Reader) so I only have to access one site instead of every single blog I read. GR is introducing more and more social features, eg you can see your "friends' " choices of blog reading, you can "like" someone's blog posts and see how many other people feel the same, you can easily email posts to people. However, I don't see my use of GR changing significantly from being my window to blogs and to keep me in touch with what those bloggers are writing and conversing about at their own sites.
Typepad. Six Apart, the company that makes the Typepad blogging platform, have introduced a lot of changes over the past year. One of these is that the blog dashboard is now a way to connect to and follow other Typepad bloggers and people with a Typepad profile. When I log on now, I see posts and comments from the people I follow. I use this service a bit - i.e. I follow five people, only two of whom have Typepad blogs. I think this service would be more useful if I read more Typepad blogs, but most of the blogs I read seem to be on Blogger - Typepad and Wordpress are in a minority. The Typepad system does work, though, because I do comment on Kim's blog Reading Matters more frequently through seeing her posts and comments every day in my dashboard, and similarly for Ben of Material Witness. I'd do the same for It's a Crime! blog and Random Jottings blog also, but their bloggers don't seem to be part of the new system, as yet. (Incidentally, I like Typepad very much, not strictly on-topic for this post, but their customer service is also great, once again staffed by real people who go the extra mile, totally unlike Google's automated forums.)
Twitter. I do see the use for Twitter now, but again, I am so pressed for time that I don't follow anyone who uses the service to "chat" about their daily comings, goings and musings. I follow two or three individuals who share common interests, a couple of lists, and apart from that, organisations (eg publishers, publications) who post links to articles or books that I am likely to want to read. Twitter is a similar service to Friend Feed but its aggregation is by hash tag (created by all the users interested in one topic, eg a conference or a TV programme or a joke on a theme) rather than by "rooms". You can't build up a conversation on Twitter in the same way that you can on Friend Feed, but it is increasingly popular as a way to communicate about or during a mass event.
Facebook. I think this is the world's most popular social networking site, and the one that seems to be making the most out of the current fad for mobile applications. I don't use it myself apart from maintaining a presence there as it does not fit any of my lifestyle needs, but I can understand why it is very popular when I see how young people I know use it to keep in touch - with year groups from school or college, to share photos, to arrange events, share mutual jokes, and so on. It's cheaper and more efficient than the phone. It is carrying an increasing amount of advertising, and it will be interesting to see if it goes the way of MySpace and becomes essentially unusable because of the quantity and quality of ads. It will also be interesting to see if it continues to annoy its users by introducing new features without asking them first, then having to backtrack (as happened to Google with Google Buzz).
Well, this post is a bit of an incoherent information dump, but I enjoyed writing down what I like about certain social networks. I doubt that any of them will make money by following my advice, but they will have some happy users!
Disclaimer: I am aware there are lots of other social networks out there, and have even used quite a few of them. I'm just focusing here on the ones I like, and return to regularly.
I certainly agree with you about Google Reader and Friend Feed Maxine and I also agree that the best thing they offer is filtering.
One of my biggest problems with social networking is that most platforms assume you want to combine all the elements of your life so that your friends, family, colleagues and 'special interest' mates are all jumbled up together. Because I need to keep any work-related online activity very separate from any personal activity and never the twain should meet I get frustrated with most platforms and end up abandoning them. I do have separate accounts for work and non-work but nasty things can happen that relate the two without me knowing (as would have happened if I'd said yes to Buzz because I have at some point emailed myself from my work account to my non-work account so the two would have ended up sharing information with each other which is what happened to a colleague of mine who wasn't as distrustful as me).
And even without my need for separation I don't particularly like the way platforms like twitter force me into either knowing things I don't want to know about acquaintances (e.g. if I follow a book blogger I like I get ALL their tweets, most of which are completely irrelevant to me because 95% of their life isn't about book blogging) or appearing anti-social. That's where I find Friend Feed great because you can follow the threads of interest from the people of interest. It's quite natural that people have multiple interests and share these but it's going to be rare that I share all the same interests with many other people.
You've piqued my curiosity in finding a different blogging platform though. I've been looking to change for a while and all I am sure of is I won't touch blogger with a ten-foot pole but I will check out typepad.
Posted by: Bernadette | 16 February 2010 at 20:45
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Bernadette. Much appreciated that you took the time. You do have to pay for Typepad but it is pennies a month and I have always been very pleased with their service. But I suspect the fact you have to pay is part of the reason why not so many people blog using the platform ;-)
I agree with you about the confusion between work and personal blogging - I tried to keep it separate for a while via separate blogs, email accounts etc - but it rapidly became impossible, people at work kept asking me for book recommendations and I realised my two identities were but one! It is hard to be in control of one's online identity - but I certainly agree with you about Twitter, etc, that one just does not want to know about "the other 95 %" of someone's life just because you have one thing in common with them. When will these organisations that are obsessed with unifying everything "get" that? I like FF for this reason because it does seem to realise that users want to organise their own preferences, and I like Nature Network because it does not bother with all that but just "is what it is", take it or leave it, you don't automatically bring along all your other personae with you.
Posted by: Maxine | 16 February 2010 at 21:09
Maxine, I echo your comments on Typepad service. I had a problem logging in last year and they found my tweet on it, helping me through there. Excellent service levels. Will have to innvestigate the dashboard you mention!
Posted by: crimeficreader | 16 February 2010 at 21:29
CFR- thanks for popping over. If you see that little profile thingy on the right on the main page of this blog ("Maxine view profile. Get updates on your Typepad dashboard" and click on it, I think that means we can follow each other on Typepad if you enable the feature at your blog.
Posted by: Maxine | 17 February 2010 at 15:12
A very nice round-up of those tools. Personal experience and recommendations are always helpful. Have you noticed any changes in FriendFeed's popularity since it was acquired by Facebook?
I just saw Martin Fenner's post on ScienceFeed http://bit.ly/aWWarM and wonder if that is another one worth keeping an eye on.
Posted by: Frank Norman | 18 February 2010 at 17:19
Thanks for the comment, Frank. I believe that FF popularity is heading downwards. I don't know if that is related to the FB acquisition, or if there is some other new fad that everyone has gone off to. I do notice that some of the "regulars" in the life sciences group at FF hardly seem to be there any more. For me, it works very much as a reading group, but that isn't a science application. I read martin's post and will watch out for ScienceFeed, though I think that yet another social network is probably something I don't need - I am quite happy with the ones I have currently got ;-) (I am also on networks like LinkedIn, which I still can't see any use for.....)
Posted by: Maxine | 18 February 2010 at 21:11
I agree that no-one can possibly need yet another social network site, but they keep popping up. I tried (not very hard) and failed to make Google Wave work for me; I had high expectations but now I'm not sure if it's worth persevering with it.
I totally agree about LinkedIn too, though I have observed activity in some of their topic groups.
Posted by: Frank Norman | 19 February 2010 at 17:12
I managed to totally avoid being splashed by Google Wave, Frank ;-)
Posted by: Maxine | 19 February 2010 at 19:17