Erica Glasier: Oversocialized! Social media & interactive futurism from sunny Winnipeg

The best way to look like a superfuturist guru is to predict the demise of the current big thing. Social overload is leading some to wonder if, rather than being the year of ubiquitous social web, 2010 might just be the year social eats itself.

People are muttering about social networks not scaling. Overfriending, social lines blurring, and etiquette confusion are sucking the fun out of Facebook. We know you can only maintain about 150 meaningful connections, and that as networks get bigger they turn from conversations back into broadcasting. Group inertia also keeps us mired where our group already is—no one seems to be asking for one more network to log in to, update, and remake connections on. Google Buzz did not entice my mother-in-law.

I’m not sure it’s the number of friendships we’re trying to maintain, it’s the intrusion of different kinds of relationships into inappropriate spaces. It’s like when your spouse shows up at work and it’s so incongruous to see them there that you act weird in front of your work friends. You know?

“It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure”

Web 3.0 (don’t roll your eyes) is gonna be about signal to noise. Connecting everyone was great, but it turns out we don’t like everyone. Filters like lists are weak at this point, whether to limit their adoption (more sharing = more revenue) or because demand hasn’t been great enough. But if Big Social doesn’t want to see a precipitous decline in participation, they need to hire a few usability experts and make it happen.

So Facebook is where my robust profile resides, and where I’m most likely to contribute to conversations. You can have the most holistic relationship with me there. As such, I’m ending up friending people I haven’t met IRL, and Facebook is becoming less of a front-porch-with-a-beer and more of a cordial-nod-at-the-grocery-store experience. I kinda like beer. But I’m scared to say so, because Senior People Are Watching. Socializing just became brand building, ugh. What can we do to get that down-home feeling back? How can I associate with people who like my blog without them seeing me in my jammies?

The smartest thing Facebook could do would be to introduce a secondary request system, “Professional Request”, and scoop LinkedIn. I belong to LinkedIn but don’t use it, in part so as not to replicate effort. Facebook could make LinkedIn utterly irrelevant by allowing users to add professional contacts that would receive limited (or different) profile access – perhaps restricting photos, video, and application activities (Farmville, I’m talking to you), highlighting instead fan pages and status updates. This pared down sharing would become the accepted new norm for professional relationships within Facebook, allowing users to keep their Dunbar 150 in the lifestream loop while still offering aquaintances limited access, including messaging. With etiquette in place to govern this dual stream of relationships, users can feel more confident expanding their personal networks to include people they haven’t met IRL and with whom they still want to engage without sharing baby pictures.

This could extend to what virtually amounts to dual profiles, with separate status updates for personal & professional contacts, and a rich niche for developers to build apps geared towards enhancing professional connections. Facebook could smoothly handle this double stream for sophisticated power users that have both networks to maintain.

Btw I googled “LinkedIn is useless” to find this video. Facebook, if you want to pay me for this awesome idea, I’ll be glad to send you my Pay Pal info.

Image: The New York Post

Here’s what I think. There are some big time alliances going down in the social media stratosphere right now. People are picking sides.

ReadWriteWeb had that trouble the other day with people thinking they were logging in to Facebook when they got ReadWriteWeb as a Google result for “Facebook login”. ReadWriteWeb, in a post immortalizing their own internet-famous moment, blames Google for this.

But how had this happened? It certainly wasn’t that thousands and thousands of people had just started searching for “facebook login” yesterday. This stream of people has been there all along and something is broken.

Google had completely failed its users. It put us, with a post about how an AOL partnership foreshadowed Facebook becoming the de facto user database, above the most logical search result possible – Facebook’s login page.

While for us this was completely random, other search results show that this is actually a space that is otherwise intentionally occupied by sites trying to siphon off this traffic and profit from it.

But does that sound like an accident? This might seem obvious, but Google controls search results. Google’s taking on Facebook head on with Google Buzz. Steve Reubel thinks Facebook might have a crush on Bing, confirming, in my mind, Google and the One Social Network To Rule Them just aren’t that into each other. I betcha Google pretended to think ReadWriteWeb was cute to capitalize on the usual disgruntled user fumbling during a Facebook UI change rollout.

Huh, that’s an interesting idea. What happens when the business that controls the news has to manage news about their business? I know Google’s not evil and all, but if I was the PR guy over there I’d be hanging out around the search guys, um, quite a bit.

So Google hates Facebook, plays ReadWriteWeb to annoy its users. RWW, while flattered at the attention, knows Google is just using them and makes it clear they will never, ever be their date for the prom.

So who is trying to bff the all-seeing GOOG? Continue reading

Don your tinfoil helmets, oh friended ones, and wrap your conspiracy theories around this…

Facebook celebrated their 6th birthday by announcing their network now boasts 400 million souls, or almost 6% of the earth’s population. Facebook’s birthday is February 4th…02/04..2+4 is—gulp—6! If you’re slow with math, that’s three big fat 6’s in a row.

Oh my. Let’s bust out the Bible and see what it has to say about this.

Daniel 8:23-25
And through his policy also he shall cause deceit to prosper in his hand…

Could that refer to a privacy policy, possibly the one that roped in millions of users who never dreamed their friend lists would one day be made public? A policy that, once we had unstoppable group inertia* due to our elderly parents making likely their only leap to social networking, then changed to make way for better search results and advertising revenues? Gosh, I hope not.

Daniel 7:24-27
And he shall speak great words against the most High…and think to change times and laws.

Ok, if “he” is Mark Zuckerberg and “the most High” is the American Constitution (specifically, the Fourth Amendment, guarding against “unreasonable searches” and protecting “a reasonable expectation of privacy”) and the “times” he’d  like to change are the famous social norms regarding privacy, am I painting a scary enough picture for you yet? But wait…

Revelation 13:3-18
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the Mark.

Gartner Research predicts that by 2012—the end of the freaking Mayan calendar—”Facebook will lead the pack in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web through Facebook Connect and similar mechanisms. The interoperability will be critical to survival of other social networks. Other social networks (including Twitter) will continue to develop…However, they will all revolve around Facebook.” In other words Facebook will control the universe. The universe may or may not include your disposable income.

Alrighty then. Nothing to panic about. We knew the end times were probably upon us anyway. Let him that hath understanding reckon the number of the beast. Hopefully this newfound prophetic clarity is a balm for those souls chapped about controlling their own information. Let it help you accept your fate with grace. I, for one, welcome our new Social Overlords. Happy Birthday, Facebook!

*Group inertia, or social inertia, is the critical mass attained when everyone you could possibly care about joins a social network, making it tough to leave lest they not follow to “the next big thing”.

Happy Data Privacy Day! A day to relax with family and friends IRL, ponder your digital fingerprint and maybe grill a few Tofurkey sausages.

I’m celebrating Data Privacy Day by staying offline for 24 hours. By “offline”, I mean “not on Facebook”, lest you think I have magic analogue blogging powers. I’m  temporarily defecting from the Big F, as a conscientious objection to its recent bait and switch privacy shenanigans. 24 hours logged out of the world’s most popular social network. I can totally do that. It’s just one little website.

Bleary this morning without my usual cup of decaf (I’m whitening), my mouse moves automatically toward the little blue and white ‘f’ icon in my bookmarks toolbar. Whoa! I think, barely deflecting the click in time. Let’s visit somewhere else. Twitter, perhaps. Twitter use doesn’t strike me as contrary to the spirit of Privacy Day, because despite the fact that it’s actually more publicly searchable, I use it for business and it contains no pictures of me drinking beer.

In support of my Privacy Day tweet, I google* “Data Privacy Day”. The second search result is a Facebook page. Ubiquitous little bugger, that Facebook. I neatly avoid that particular link and go on about my day.

On the road, I wonder how my husband’s convergent media panel at ALL ACCESS: The Digital Incubator is going. Normally I’d Facebook him and see what was shaking. Unlocking my iPhone and heading for the blue square is almost one smooth motion; again I brake and consider my other communication options. I’m not going to phone him, for Pete’s sake. What’s this “messages” icon? Huh. I suppose I could text him. That would actually be faster. Ok. Continue reading

Hooray for boobies!

It was girls gone virtually wild on Facebook yesterday, as a ‘tell us your bra colour’ meme quickly infected the rest of the world from some patient zeros in Detroit. I heard about it on a New York ladies’ forum before I saw it in action, with the rationale that it was for breast cancer awareness. When it popped up amongst my Facebook friends, the ‘awareness’ mechanism became clear: each highly descriptive, cryptic colour was like a wink, forcing you to pause a moment and picture each friend in her skivvies.

So how does that steamy little moment promote breast cancer awareness? Jaded females wondered if they were being pwned by the internet and giving up the goods for free. But think about it: there are a couple approaches to marketing a cause*. Show people the disaster that looms without their support, or make them think about the great thing they already have & threaten to take it away. In the case of boobs, you’ve got a great product to call to mind! Taking a moment (or several, depending on the size of friends list) to reflect on the glory of boobs certainly makes you appreciate them. You’d hate to see any lost to breast cancer. Continue reading

When I was youngster, our house was on a party line with another house across the dusty gravel road. The phone would ring one long for our house, two short for theirs. You answered it if it was for you. You could pick it up at any time and hear—heck, participate in—the conversation of anyone else on the line. Party lines functioned on respect, the honour system, and general good-neighbourliness.

My 8-year-old conversations didn’t have a whole lot of scandalous content such as might impact my future personal brand, but it was a pretty weird situation. That level of personal space invasion would be intolerable today. Within the same household, within the same family we all have our own phones. We hold our communications cards close to our chest. I squint with suspicion when my iPod picks up next door’s wifi network. What kind of person names their network Afrosizzle?

Facebook’s been making some big headlines with their new privacy settings, which include forced exposure of some previously private stats (name, gender, home town, your list of friends). This is ostensibly to appease Canada’s Privacy Commission, although completely removing the ability to hide your associations and personal details can’t be what the ole’ CPC had in mind. Continue reading

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, & the social media that fulfill 'em. Biggie size available on Flickr.

Prologue: Today the New Oxford American Dictionary announced “unfriend” is the 2009 Word of the Year. May it not be a portent of things to come.

Gird yourself for a mortifying tale of techno treachery, friends. Girded?

Ok. In my weekly perusal of Facebook friend’s friends to see who I might be missing being friends with (it’s an orgy of friendship up in here), I came across an ex-coworker who I just adore. We’ve been Facebook friends forever, since that first blissful wave of friendings back in the 1980’s. I thought “I shall be sociable and leave him a wall howdy!”, and scrolled through my friend list to find him. How nice of me, spreading wall sunshine. Scroll scroll. Wait. What the heck. He. Wasn’t. There.

Like dropping your laptop in the bathtub (both personally dismaying and electrically imprudent), a cold shock of disbelief rippled through my being. It appeared, I cringed, that I had been UNFRIENDED.

Ouch.

Now, I could have assimilated the sting of rejection and got on with my life had this been your run of the mill Facebook-friend-you-don’t-really-know-but-they-know-your-other-friend-and-you-met-them-once-outside-Starbucks kind of thing, but this was an actual capital-F Friend. Someone I like! Someone whose positivity and energy shines through their status updates like the glint off a unicorn’s horn! What went so very wrong that he couldn’t at least just “hide” me? Continue reading