UberNoggin

I’ve had some feedback (translation: confused readers) after my Laws of Networking post last week so I thought I’d go at the idea another way….

The Exciting Story of Mr. Fez’s Party!

Once upon a time Mr. Fez decided to have a party. He was old school. He wanted all of the attention on him and his fantastic hat.  He had recently learned a new dance and wanted everyone to see. This is a party under Sarnoff’s model. It might be fun for a little while but eventually folks are going to get bored.

After the dismal failure of his first party, Mr. Fez got an idea for an even better party! This time, instead of everyone only looking at him, he would pair his guests off and have them only talk to each other. Surely, Mr. Bone and Mr. Wood will love to meet each other. This was all good and fine but after a while the guests got bored again. After all, there’s only so much you can learn about why Mr. Cheesehead prefers cheddar over muenster.  This is a party which adheres to Metcalf’s law. It’s only handy for pairs of people.

Now Mr. Fez is annoyed! How on Earth can he throw a party where everyone is happy? He decides to have a party based on Reed’s law. At this party people will be allowed to form their own groups based on their interests, the groups can be any size they want and people will be able to join more than one conversation and move between the conversations! Eureka! His third party is a raging success!

So what are the implications of this? First, people like to decide who they’ll connect with and they want to be able to see all of their options. Networks that don’t allow you to at least view the people you have something in common with (as Facebook allows you to see the profiles of people who are in your network) don’t allow members to connect with whom they want. Second, people like to self-organize. They don’t want to be forced into groups and they want to be able to form, join, and leave groups whenever they want.

Apply this to Second Life, for example. In SL I can’t see how recently someone has logged in; I can’t see who their friends are (group names don’t often tell you enough), and I’m limited to how many groups I can join. Would SL change significantly if we could see each other’s friends lists or if we could join more than 25 groups? Yes! But more on this later.

I hope that this strange little story makes these ideas about social networks make a little more sense. Now it’s your turn! Which networks would be improved with the addition of more flexible group tools or more transparent group membership? How would networks be changed with more transparent friend affiliations or more viewable profiles?

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