Leveraging the Future of Social Technology
Posted 2/21/2006 04:44:00 PM |
Social technology has evolved along a remarkable course over the past hundred years; the advent of computer networks has pushed this evolution along dramatically. Thousands of tools have emerged, with some finding remarkable success and the ability to affect discourse (email, instant messenger, blogs). Social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook are currently a prime example of a social technology, and with numbers like 50 Million-plus users (MySpace), they have achieved a market penetration that is likely unequaled.
Underlying all social technologies are certain fundamental aspects, and I've decided to enumerate them as the connection/description/attribution model. Put simply, the structural aspects of social relationships can be represented through connection, description and attribution; all social technologies enable at least one of these things, and better social technologies enable a mix of these. I'll define the aspects of this model and provide examples.
- Connection: The most fundamental aspect of sociality. How we connect, how we converse, how we establish social relations. Imagine the telegraph, telephone, cellular phone, instant messenger.
- Description: How we enumerate our social relationships. In the real world, we enumerate our relationships through memberships, clubs, and the like. Social networking websites are a key example.
- Attribution: How we understand notions of power and authority in social relationships. A hugely affective part of social relationships; often thought of in terms of economy and social capital. Attribution exists in social systems, particularly in the "karmic" functions of virtual communities. Virtual approximations of real-world attribution are difficult, however, and current implementations do not streamline well with our lives.
As it turns out, the attribution answer is remarkably complex, particularly because social attribution is a powerful type of information, which we often use for strategic means. What we know and what we share are selective and non-value-neutral. Take for example Facebook Details. In one of the simplest examples of attribution, the Facebook asks you to claim how you know a person you signify as a friend. By attributing a value to how you know someone, you cast a lot of value on that social connection. You may be very closely tied to an individual, but if you choose "Met Randomly" as your social connection, people will assign value to the connection. You can quickly see how attribution data is often subject to protection and mis-representation; in essence, attribution data about our social relationships are our protected cards at the poker table.
Attribution doesn't always have to have such high stakes, though. Attribution is multi-faceted, and can occur in a multiplicity of ways. Terrell Russell, in Contextual Authority Tagging: Cognitive Authority Through Folksonomy, describes a distributed system where individuals attribute authority through folksonomy. The example that stays with me is this: Imagine if you are looking for an auto mechanic. If people could tag each other with skills, wouldn't it be interesting to look at your social network (and extended social networks) for people who have been tagged with "auto mechanic" expertise? In doing so, you could see who has been tagged the most, and follow the social chains of authority. He's gone as far as to write a plugin for punBB, which is appropriately called Expertise.
Another example is claimID. As an actor in a network, your attribution data is valuable as you establish your place. In the context of a search engine, when people are researching you, your attribution data is the information that is about you online. Unfortunately, search engines are bad at establishing a full picture of your identity; by collecting, presenting and contextualizing the information about you online, you pose attributes to your social identity. As you control what you share, this mode of self-attribution meshes naturally with our power needs in this situation.
As our social technology needs grow, and our uses grow more complex, tools that naturally combine aspects of the social technological model will become more useful. It is highly important that the uses gel with our current mental models; just as it took a while for people to become comfortable with descriptive social tools, attribution will require a nuanced approach. It is important, though, that designers begin incorporating attribution into their social toolsets. Communication - while key - is easily commoditized, and description does not provide strong use incentives. Attribution, properly done, will fuel a new generation of social tools, and it is up to designers to leverage this.
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