InnoWiser

The explosion in social networks of all flavors on the web may have increased one’s online social presence; however, it has also created several problem of its own, both technical and social. Multiple identities with its attendant password problem is just the tip of the iceberg. Far more grave is the information overload from blogs, newsfeeds, updates, emails, tweets requests for responses and all manner of attention-seeking sites. How many users consider these are real problems? How serious are these? And how are users coping with them? Solving these problems is not very easy; if it were, they would have been resolved to some extent. Whoever seeks to surmount these challenges will require deep insight into users’ behavior and needs, and will have tremendous opportunities.

[This is a rather long post. I appreciate your patience here. It was important for me to jot down all the thoughts together, rather than present them piecemeal.]

Today, most users are on multiple social networks. You might have your own page on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo if you are college student, or perhaps somebody persuaded by the recent slew of articles in mainstream media (BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Time, WSJ, etc). You might be on LinkedIn or Ryze if you are a professional. If you are a travel fan, you might be on TravelPod, BootsnAll or have atleast surfed some of those blogs. You might have your own blog on Blogger, Wordpress, Vox, LiveJournal or on your own domain, and interact with your users using MyBlogLog. You might surf the web using recommendations from your virtual ‘friends’ using Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or other recommendation sites. If you are a music fan, you might be on last.fm, imeem or MySpace. If you are particularly well known or an early adopter, you might have your own set of followers on Twitter, or any of the mobile social networks. If you are into photography, you might have your pictures (and friends/fans) on Flickr, Photobucket, or Slide. You may already have multiple email accounts on Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail or all three. You may also be chatting with your friends and family on Yahoo!, Gmail, Skype, MSN, etc. This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you are like most people I know, you might have several accounts, either known to each other or not.

I know I’m not the first one to think about it. Jon Udell writes :
“How many networks can one person join? How many different identities can one person sanely manage? How many different tagging or photo-uploading or friending protocols can one person deal with?” He also notes whether and how each new social network will reach a critical mass. (More on this later). Echoing him, Tim O’Reilly writes: “What really needs to be done is not just to connect the various social networks that do exist in internet network-of-networks style, but also to social-network enable our real social network apps: our IM, our email, our phone. Where, I keep asking vendors, is the Web 2.0 address book?”
ZDNet Blogger Steve O’Hear Read/Write Web’s 2007 Web predictions and writes: “Another driving force for social networks in 07, will be the increasing number of niche networks which are highly targeted to particular interest groups or social activities. The question that still remains however, is how many social networks any one user is likely to join and remain active in? This is where Read/WriteWeb’s prediction of fatigue has more weight.” In another post, he goes on to talk about data rights issues.
Sure, the problems have been discussed before, but I can’t help feeling that there’s more to these problems - more social than technical, perhaps - and we need more insight before we “solve” them.

The Problems

The way I see it, there are atleast five problems (in no particular order). I will list the solutions or attempts at resolution later, but first I want to focus on the problems themselves.

1. Multiple accounts. Everybody has them: accounts for various social networks, accounts for banks and other financial institutions, accounts for email,… The problems are not unknown or new - lost or forgotten passwords (been there), lost or forgotten user names (I’ve been there), etc. Over time, the passwords get more predictable, perhaps leading to easily hackable accounts. Of course, there are ways to solve some of these problems. Password managers on browsers come to mind. But more on solutions later.
2. Multiple identities. An issue close to, but not the same as, the multiple accounts. This is a more deep seated issue and has more social implications than the previous one, which had mainly technical issues. How do users reconcile multiple identities on multiple networks? *Do* they reconcile, and do they care? Do YOU want all your identities/avatars known to every person in your network? Think anonymity, think differing interests, think professional network versus the casual, social network, and think the differences between off-line networks and online ones. This is the reason why most ‘kids’ on Facebook don’t want to ‘friend’ their parents, who seem to be joining the network in droves, perhaps out of curiosity to see who among *their* age-group is on it, if not to snoop on their kids’ online activities.
I believe users lie along the entire spectrum here, from wanting only one identity across all networks to having completely separate identities on each different network. I am somewhere in between, and I suspect most users will stand somewhere in between as well. Technologies like Open ID exist to solve this problem. However, this is an evolving issue, and it cannot be resolved completely without first understanding the needs, behavior and issues of different user segments.
3. Privacy. Is privacy on the Internet dead, as Scott McNealy once proclaimed? And shall we get over it? This issue is moot when you consider the issue of multiple identities. The more online presence one has, the it is easier to stalk, hack, and disrepute someone. This is especially worrisome when more and more younger kids are getting online, joining various networks, and exposing their entire life online. The net-gen is cool with discussing their angst for all to see, perhaps leaving embarrassing imprints for posterity. And if not for posterity, then surely for future employers. Besides these, the question remains: who owns your personal data, your click streams, your interactions, your preferences? Some social network du jour? Or you? And how would you control it, if at all? Of course, this problem is not unique to social networks, except that networks only compound it. I do not have any great answers… just some obvious questions here.
4. Information overload. With dozens of social networking sites, thousands of blogs, news sites, shopping sites, entertainment destinations, portals, 24/7 crackberry with push email all constantly vying for a piece of our attention, no wonder many people feel overwhelmed. Again, this concept is not new. It’s been discussed before: Read/Write Web has an excellent overview. The book Attention Economy discusses the causes and effects. The Web is only increasing in size, so there’s ever more demand for our attention. Online social networks are only adding to the noise on the signal. No wonder then, that there’s a surge in recommendation sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and others where users “recommend” stories to other users, each designed to provide a better user experience based on taste and preference. Technologies like RSS and information filters like news readers (Google Reader Newsreader, and so on), do allow users to be selective, but too many subscriptions create their own problems.

As expected, there are users who will cope — indeed flourish — within this information glut. And then there are those who will find it overwhelming and seek out a quiet time. It is not surprising, then, to see sites like NoSo Project - a ’social’ network that is a “real world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking events. The NoSo experience offers an opportunity to create NO connections by scheduling NO events with NO friends”. Hmm… an *unsocial* social network?
5. Utility. Social networks obviously provide a benefit. Networks are formed around people with certain affinities. So long as the perceived value of the network is more than the perceived transaction cost of connecting with others, the network will grow. Its members will derive some benefits. But it’s a different matter whether *each* new social network will grow beyond a certain *critical mass*.
Let’s say you are a new user, until now not connected to any network. You are faced with the choice of joining a dozen (or 20, or 40) networks. How would you decide which network to join? You might say: Gee, Metcalfe’s law says that a network’s value increases (quadratically, or exponentially) with every node. So would you join all the dozen networks? Would your utility increase proportionately after joining all the networks? Umm… I am not so sure. You’d probably join the one (or few networks) with perceived maximum utility based on your tastes. After a certain point, joining a new network does not increase the utility. In fact, it may diminish the utility within your existing networks. And the reason for that is simple: the demand on our time divide our attention, to the extent that the quality of connection (or value) diminishes. In the real, off-line world we limit our physical interactions to the most important.
While the above analogy may seem theoretical, here’s a practical example. On networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace where adding number of “connections” or “friends” is often a competitive sport, do you balk at connecting with users who have 500 “friends”? How about 1000? Or 10,000? or 1 million? If so, then that might be your threshold of diminishing return. If you’ve never balked at any such number, then perhaps you and I are viewing quality of interactions with a different lens.
The trouble, of course, is that we do not know the quality of these connections. That’s a whole ‘nother topic of discussion, but it points to the perceived value or utility of the network.

The Solutions
None of the above problems are meant to be seen in isolation, nor does it mean that these are not resolvable. There are technical solutions and social solutions. There is, of course, one technical solution to the problem of disparate networks. Join them together. And Facebook is doing just that, with its social networking platform.

More on this and other solutions in another post.

Meanwhile, what do YOU think are the problems with social networks? Have you experienced any? What would make you join or leave another social network? Let me know in the comments below!