Of Social Media Baubles

I read Umair Haque’s post – The Social Media Bubble, through the prism of  ‘interesting’ vs ‘popular‘, the subject of my last post. In the post, Haque’s biggest gripe with social media, the way it is now, is the low quality of ties between the people who are connected. Thin relationships, he calls them and he has five supporting arguments – the disproportionate rise in the average number of ‘friends’ vs trust, the creation of more intermediaries rather than removal of old ones, hate (and I keep ranting about this on the other blog – trigger happiness), exclusion (again, something from the other blog – the clique friendly web), and lack of intrinsic value (and therefore the need to monetise, perhaps by ‘extractive, ethically questionable ways’). He also sees three major casualties because of this – inefficient attention allocation, investment in low quality content, and the weakening of the Internet as a force for good.

Now, the archives of posts here and on the other blog would show that I am sometimes frustrated and disappointed with a lot of activities on the social web, its usage, and therefore the direction in which it is going. But then again, I still have faith in the social web, and believe what we’re going through is the phase of transition, a time between fundamental shifts in the way we interact, and I’d be naive to expect it to be smooth. Also, unlike the earlier forms of media and communication, the web (and mobile) seem to have a much smaller gestation time between disruptions. I now tend to believe that this IS the way its going to be for quite a long time, because we’ve only started exploring avenues and possibilities. So, extrapolating current usage patterns to the future in a disruptive scenario looks flawed to me. But yes, like any other ardent faithful, I too am looking for signs.. and thoughts.

So while I did agree a lot with what was written in the post, and considered it a very good read, I was even more happy to read two replies to that post – “Rethinking Thin: Social Relationships in Social Media“, by Adrian Chan, and “Umair Haque is another new spatialist” by Stowe Boyd.

Adrian Chan does a great job in deconstructing Haque’s post. He first argues that the logic and analytic of social network analysis cannot be based on the attributes and qualities of human relationships and social organization. He maintains that in the former, the tie (and its not the same as a relationship) is more significant than the node. (person) The (sometimes) asynchronous and unequal communication facilitated by the medium is also a point well made. The semantics of “social”, when explored through the meanings of ties, interactions, communication and relationships is something I found very enlightening. On the whole, I agree that these tools are modes and means of producing communication, and offer us means to form ties, interact, possibly communicate and then over a period of time, even establish a relationship. But the ties can be just that, and remain to be re-used in other contexts and at other times too, by people I may not have a relationship with, until then. Its a post you really must read, and I must confess that I’m still (re) reading it to truly grasp all the arguments.

Stowe Boyd argues that Haque is ‘undervaluing the utility of weak ties’ and then brings in three of his own thoughts – ‘social has not gone far enough’, whatever is there has been ‘commoditized by the corporate types’, and a worry about the governance of the social web. The common thread that I sensed (with the paragraph above) was how the dynamics of broadcast media have been brought into play in blogging and microblogging. (attributes of one system forced on another). The other wrong attribution, with respect to Haque’s post, is perhaps looking at it through just an economic framework. The New Urbanism and New Spatialism notes are really fascinating, and that’s an understatement.

Very honestly, and it most probably is because of my levels of understanding, the two ‘rebuttals’ and the thoughts therein, are quantum leaps that are required, which will take time. In the short-medium term, I think it will be an evolution (as opposed to a revolution). We might end up with better social media structures and frameworks of understanding or we could become a set of gated communities within a world wild web with controlled experiences suited to our likes and dislikes. The latter is not something I’d like since we’ll just be trading one set of walls and gatekeepers for another. In either case, I hope the medium term will see better tools for managing our ties and relationships, and will help us streamline our creation, and consumption. A good note on that curation by Robert Scoble.

Meanwhile, I’m also thinking of the implication for brands. The no-brainer is an approach that goes beyond tools and looks at basic changes required within and without. The other part is setting the expectations right on metrics and ROI, when using the social web?

until next time, echosystems, I hope not..