Can’t We Just Get Along?

Recently, I read about the decline in use that MySpace is facing. Part of its suffering is largely attributed to Rupert Murdoch setting reputedly unrealistic ad revenue targets and placing his attention, understandably, elsewhere. His purchase of Dow Jones really was a big deal, though. In any case, it had me wondering whether the big kahunas of the social networks were treating this microcosm of social networks as an arms race.

From a consumer perspective, most of us come from a very narrow software-driven experience, playing our first computer game, learning our first programming language or calculating our first spreadsheet. It has evolved to somewhat of a nebulous existence online using applications without reading manuals, reading books without paper, gazing at millions of pieces of art hung on a sheet of plastic, and more contemporarily without worrying about how much it all costs [I am specifically referring to Open Source software and Creative Commons attribution, not piracy]. This indicates to me how far software has come; in fact the word feels somewhat anachronistic. What we use or do with computers today seems so much more fluid and advanced which makes the possibly baggage-laden term seem archaic and weighty. When we use Facebook or Twitter do we think of it as a software application or as visiting or contributing to a community?

I’m not writing to address the nuances of software, but the nature of the products that the imagination and toil many people have offered up so that we might…socialize. That’s not a new concept but how we do it is novel. Social networks’ intrinsic online and boundary-less qualities go beyond what we might have envisioned for our own inter-personal communications some 47 years ago. I allude to the aspect of software and competitiveness because that is what we are used to seeing from companies used to selling their wares in a box for consumers to take home and pop into their computer. It’s a zealous competition of one purveyor seeking to do outdo another by having as large a consumer base as possible and trying to offer—whatever it might be—some magical snake oil to keep its customers coming back for more that doesn’t fit the mold of how I see social networks co-exist.

I don’t believe these networks should be seen as competitors but as neighbouring social cliques, albeit large ones. When I was young, I had a small circle of friends. These were typically kids with whom I went to school that, for the most part, also lived in my neighbourhood. The only far-ranging friends I had were the sons and daughters of my parents’ friends who lived elsewhere in town. My clique was small and it helped shape some of my childhood and formed a large portion of my memories associated with it. As I grew older, friends entered and left my life by way of school, work, university and social activities like my Tae Kwon Do classes. My life appeared to undergo cell division: every time a life decision was made, part of my life divided with the possibility of adding a group of new acquaintances. I’m certainly not a unique case and we often juggle these different groups of relationships effortlessly without a second thought. When we enter a certain routine like going to the movies, you go with certain people. When you go work out at a gym, there may be a different set of acquaintances. Granted, there can be an awkward moment when two groups of your friends collide yet somehow they find a way to determine their compatibility with one another. You’re simply the catalyst by which they meet. Relatives by marriage is a good example.

With that in mind, how can I not see these social networks as anything but different clusters of people you turn to and interact with depending on your needs and activities? I find that what I see, hear and contribute to these different networks differ as well. I’m not a different person on Facebook than I am on Twitter than I am on YouTube but I experience each community differently because what I get out of each is different. For me, I do not see a need for one social network to be better or bigger or brighter than another. Surely, each one has its own merits and its flaws they can improve on but in no way do I want one group to assimilate another. I certainly don’t want my friends and acquaintances to coalesce into a single Group either. That’s how I see the online social ecosystem. I think there are lessons to be learned about our effectiveness with something once you overload it with “features”. You can make numerous analogies about the retail software landscape and I still probably wouldn’t be able to apply it to social networks. And I would like the Mark Zuckerbergs and Rupert Murdochs of the Internet to see it that way, too.