Human horizons in social networking

The next level is a formalised social network, such as Ning and Facebook.

"With these, you have several friends, and when you add a friend it asks how you know these guys, so I will say I met you at Kickstart Asia. What happens is that the list of 30 or 40 friendships formed at that venue are written in. So I can see who is whose friend."

The human aspect

It is not just the technology that must be considered in social networking. As Ng points out, "Even if you have the best social network platform in the world no one will use it unless you do a lot of other stuff. The technology is not the most difficult thing, the difficult thing is the people. How do I get people to contribute information? How do I get the content?"

Human engagement is important. "Going there, talking to people who are going to contribute and give them incentive to contribute, a social incentive. We do this in several ways. The first and most basic is by creating a meaning. This is what we are about. If you find it useful it will be great if you can be part of us and just help us shape our thoughts and move forward."

After meaning, contributors need to have a certain purpose: "Thus we do a lot of things so they feel recognition, and recalling that 'just talk is empty', the most important is making sure what they contribute becomes something. Then they are very happy - when what they contribute on the Wiki gets turned into real action. That consequence needs to be made clear."

This might seem nothing special or new. But people forget these basic elements, purpose and meaning, when trying to create a social network.  What is being created here is not a consumer product.  However, it has been commented that the great paradox of 'social networking' is that it uses narcissism as the glue for 'community'. "Being online means being alone, and being in an online community means being alone together", according to Nicholas Carr in his blog Rough Type: Twitter Dot Dash. "And so at last, after passing through E-mail and Instant Messaging and Texting, we arrive in the land of Twitter".

"Twitter is the latest tool to emerge in social networking.  Says Ng, "I am increasingly fascinated by the debate on the Twitter phenomenon. Twitter in case you haven't heard, is the latest thing in the social space. It permits users to type in any brief comment, up to 140 characters, any time they wish. It has been referred to as micro-blogging. The encouragement is to talk about anything, and everything, what you are doing, where you are going, what you are feeling and thinking".

This equates to a "stream of consciousness" says Tara Hung in her blog horsepigcow.com, "in the form of tweets, posts, photos or any other artifact of our day-to-day life [which] isn't really for anyone to consume. Well, not in this era anyway. It's more of a mark of our having been here. A legacy, if you will, of our lifetime. Something for our grandchildren to look back at and see how we lived".

Who owns the content?

Ownership of the information is a hot topic when it comes to Facebook-type platforms where the company running the platform owns everything that goes on, and in, Facebook. Thus, they control what happens to and with 'our' data. They can decide to expose, aggregate, process, and sell the data to third parties. In this sense, it’s not really a free service.

There is an importance attributed to owning your content and data. In an environment where you retain copyright over your own creations, sharing with a CreativeCommons license or its equivalent, you get to decide what you can do with your own productions. That requirement can be extended to an environment where you are in control of your own personal data and identity. For many people on the Internet, the bottom line is, when you give up ownership of your own content and data, you lose freedom.