Graphing Social Patterns

Ongoing at the same time as DrupalCon (which I’m at) is Graphing Social Patterns (which I’m not at).

However, based on the twitterstream (hashtag #gsp), sounds like lots of interesting presentations there:

• Charlene Li on the Future of Social Networks (CNet coverage)
• Charlene Li on the Future of Social Networks (the Slides on Slideshare)
• Beth Kanter’s notes (and her own slides on “Giving Good Poke: Using Social Apps and Media for Social Good)
• Chris Messina on Diso (slides)
• Slideshare tag gspwest2008 and tag gsp seem the best places to look for presentations to be uploaded
• Jeremiah Owyang’s notes on David Glazer’s presentation Open Social

I know I’m also missing lots of others blogging the conference - links in the comments appreciated.

Adam Greenfield is anti Social Networking

I only recently came across this post from Adam Greenfield in which he explains why he believes that computer-mediated social networking is inherently bad: “Antisocial networking.”

It’s an important and powerful critique, though one with which I ultimately disagree. Greenfield essentially argues that:

1. Social networking applications must, necessarily, oversimplify human relationships: they couldn’t possibly represent the complex and dynamic nature of any graph connecting a pair of individuals, let alone the mesh of a whole community.
2. As a result, they inevitably create emotional distress, anguish, and pain for users (and sometimes even for non-users)
3. Therefore, we should not use them.

The problem, as Greenfield sees it, is that we’re allowing technical architectures to intrude upon the pre-technical, social space of human relationships. We’re allowing the web of human relationships as-modeled-by-software-systems to reduce, pollute, and corrupt the web of human relationship as modeled in the human psyche and history of culture.
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Now it’s getting interesting - distributed social networking

Two exciting and (relatively) new projects this morning for those interested in social network portability, the social graph, and related concepts: Apache Shindig and DiSo. Both are critical, necessary, and sizable building blocks pointing in the direction of a free (as in freedom AND beer), open, portable, distributed social network infrastructure.
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