Currently, most online social networks focus heavily on one-to-many types of communication, where users “blast” messages out to their friends. This was way cool for awhile, and probably still is for anyone who’s just discovering it. But the one-to-many type of communication just doesn’t scale for most people. For most people, the bigger their network gets, the less relevant, and therefore meaningful, it becomes.
Talking to just one person, the conversation is tailored to what you two share and how you connect. Expand that to two people, and it becomes less so. For the users on Myspace or Facebook with more than 20 friends (which is probably most active users), I’m not sure what truly memorable, personal message they could possibly blast out to all of their friends. That includes how they express themselves in their profiles, what they write in their MySpace blogs, and what pictures they share. Even comments left on their friends’ pages are public, one-to-many types of communication. My guess is the vast majority of these types of communication are only meaningful or memorable to a small percentage of their friends, or none at all.
I’ll take a step back and admit that this is not even remotely scientific. But then I’ll BLAST AHEAD and proclaim that I think this holds true for every network out there. Online social networks that don’t have some ability to form small, ad-hoc groups will all eventually become irrelevant and meaningless. I think the only caveat is in crowdsourcing-type situations where having a large network actually works in your favor, like when looking for a job or the answer to a specific question. In these cases, the more people in your network, the more likely your message is to be relevant to someone. But even the communcation bourne in those types of situations is not reflective of a strong bond between users.
Having a large network affects both the messages that users choose to express, as well as how those messages will be received. There are a couple reasons for this:
Constraints
Communication constraints arise when your network gets so big that it begins to include “mixed company” - that is, what was once a place for you and your work friends, now includes old friends from high school, a couple people you briefly dated, some concert promoters, Barack Obama, and your mom. This obviously constrains the extent to which you can use this social network as way to communicate, as I wrote about in When Worlds Collide. This is the ultimate burden of success for networks like MySpace and Facebook that have gotten so popular. Of course they’d like everyone in the world to join, but that means altering the social environment of users who are already there.
Room for Error
Second, with fewer people in the audience there’s less room for misunderstanding because you’re more aware of how your words will be interpreted and more easily able to compensate for this. Based on close communication and shared experiences, people begin to develop a kind of shorthand and a set of inside jokes, that would be foreign to outsiders. It’s for this reason that, as your network gets larger, you actually stop sending out messages that you once would have – because you’re aware of the people who might receive it and interpret it the wrong way.
So what do users do when their online social networks get complicated, boring or both? They go back to doing what they always do - use email.
There seems to be a disconnect with how online social networks currently work, and how private and unpopular we really are. These sites want us to keep adding more and more contacts until our network is bursting at the seams. But when it comes to forming lasting relationships, more is not better. We just don’t have the time, energy or inclination to have that many close relationships. It’s for this reason that I have no trouble saying Facebook will eventually die. There is an inital charm to these sites that is created almost solely on their novelty. The key to the killer social network will be one that mirrors real life; facilitating the growth of fewer strong bonds, not encouraging the accumulation of several weak ones.
*If I’m wrong about Facebook, I owe you all a cookie. That’s one (1) cookie. You’ll have to share it.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:53 pm
It’s interesting that one feature Pownce has that Twitter (the previous flavor-of-the-month) lacks is the ability to target a message to a subgroup of your “friends.”
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I noticed that too…I think it’s indicative of a greater move toward one-to-one and one-to-few types of communication. Not everyone wants to be internet famous…most people just want to connect to the few people that they’re closest to.
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I think you make a great point about the potential of ad-hoc subnetworks/groups — if you think about it, that’s just how life is: as we get older, our list of “all contacts” grows, but we spend our quality time in small groups — jobs, friends from different places, sports teams, volunteering, etc.
Seems like the natural next step for online social networks. I imagine it will have to be more focused — in terms of a specific interest, project, or purpose.
Meetup is kind of like that, but the tradeoff seems to be a potential for unused wastelands of inactive groups.
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:58 pm
You made some great points here, but I’m surprised you regard Facebook as a one-to-many communications tool. I’ve only ever sent messages to one person at a time on Facebook and have found it rather difficult to send messages to many people at once. It’s because Facebook lacks a good way to send a message / link to a subset of your friends that I find myself reverting to email. (Having seen the Pownce sets feature, I really wish Facebook had something like this.) I agree, however, that there are very few things I would want to publish / send to all of my contacts, and I can see why you think Facebook is not suited for one-to-many communications of that sort.
July 4th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Maybe “message” wasn’t the right word. When I say message here, I’m referring to all the things that online social networks make it easy to do - like create a profile, with photos and a bin of friends, leave comments, post blogs or bulletins and even leave footprints on the site without explicitly messaging anyone - such as the feed on Facebook. I’m not sure how to categorize all those things, but maybe it’s just called “socializing” - putting yourself out there, making your presence known. And just as you would act differently at a public bar versus your private home, the more people you expose yourself to, the less meaningful your socializing becomes. At a public bar, what you’re doing is probably only relevant to 5 out of the 50 people there (the friends you’re with), but if you’re at home with just those people - you’re actions are relevant to 5 out of 5 of them.
July 9th, 2007 at 5:21 am
Sounds like you have too many friends on Facebook- answer’s reducing the amount. Not too complicated. Social networks are evolving quickly to enable more savvy communication that’s both public and private and directed at different people amongst all your acquaintances. You could actually argue that Facebook and it’s like are enabling us to do this better than we’ve ever done it before. Virb, Vox and previously mentioned Pownce are just some of the next generation sites that offer this as basic. Facebook might die, but social networking’s here to stay.
July 9th, 2007 at 11:10 am
You bring up a good point about reducing the number of friends I have…have you ever tried to delete a friend on one of these sites? It’s such a huge deal! It’s even harder than rejecting someone’s friendship to begin with. I think there are some things that these sites allow us to do better in terms of keeping in touch, but I’m more inclined to say that these sites make us do things that seem really unnatural - “unfriending” someone publicly is a prime example. I agree online social networking isn’t going anywhere, absolutely, I just think in the future it’s going to be more private. We should be able to create circles of friendships that aren’t necessarily public for the world to analyze.
July 11th, 2007 at 7:42 am
[...] Molti parlano bene di Facebook, il social network che si integra con Twitter sembra ormai sia il più frequentato dagli adulti. Come dire: su MySpace ci sono i teenager e gli artisti, qui si fa sul serio. Non ho creato ancora un profilo su Facebook ma forse lo farò presto, tanto per vedere di che pasta è fatto: anche perchè secondo alcuni presto morirà. Se i numeri sono questi non credo. [...]
July 11th, 2007 at 7:52 am
[...] Molti parlano bene di Facebook, il social network che si integra con Twitter sembra ormai sia il più frequentato dagli adulti. Come dire: su MySpace ci sono i teenager e gli artisti, qui si fa sul serio. Non ho creato ancora un profilo su Facebook ma forse lo farò presto, tanto per vedere di che pasta è fatto: anche perchè secondo alcuni presto morirà. Se i numeri sono questi non credo. [...]
July 15th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Vox was mentioned earlier, and there you can create groups with restricted access. This allows you to have multiple spheres of friends - e.g. an alumni set, a ‘best friends’ set and a group for your weekend football team, while still owning your own personal blog.
July 31st, 2007 at 6:29 am
[...] Another articulate view on Facebook. I can see myself subscribing to Sarah’s feed. [...]
August 24th, 2007 at 1:09 am
[...] I wrote about the increasing irrelevance of large social networks in my aptly titled post, Why Facebook Will Die. I think it’s interesting though, that as your network grows, not only does it become less relevant to you, but the things you can do with it, i.e., using it to get recommendations, becomes harder as well. [...]
September 17th, 2007 at 4:10 am
[...] But back to Facebook. Even though it was originally conceived as a place to connect with people you already know, I think it will eventually become the best place to meet new people if you’re single (if it hasn’t already) (and which will lead to its imminent demise). After all, even before it opened up to non-students, it was essentially a really powerful flirting engine. Facebook is even better for us older folks now - with the Neighborhoods application you can see who lives right in your neighborhood, and then break the ice with a poke or gift or whatever. [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
[...] Well, there’s no doubt about it. The Facebook App Super Craze is full steam ahead. From developers being paid to build them, to an entire freaking conference centered around the “social graph,” it seems like Facebook is the killer app and now we’re all struggling to build the killer app on top of it. Yes, even I, the muse who knows Facebook will die, have been struggling with this. In the past few weeks, I’ve done some long hard thinking, ideating, and…well…staring into space, about how to best utilise my own “social graph”. Ok, actually I came up with this yesterday and I really hate the term “social graph”. However, considering that it seems like the most “successful” apps out there are also the most useless ones, this one is sure to make millions… [...]
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
[...] I stumbled across this designer’s blog in the course of research for a project. I really like her prediction about Facebook. I am of the opinion that Facebook is the next Myspace, which was the next Friendster, and on down the line (was AOL the first of this genre?!). At any rate, I think very she’s worth listening to, adding her as a trusted source. [...]