Social Singularity

Over a year ago, I made the very purposeful decision to take the twitter application off of my facebook profile (this was before "selective twitter" was up and running). I was noticing that there were things I wanted to say to my twitter followers that made sense to them and to that medium that the old friends, family, and grad school crowd wouldn't find relevant or even make sense. Though it felt odd at first, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to keep those worlds separate. That people who knew the way I was currently thinking (as a brand strategist and pseudo-cultural anthropologist) were all captured on one medium while those with whom I relate to in a different (though no less authentic way) I was connected to on another medium. Not exclusively, of course, but separate to some extent.

And for a while, this plan worked very well.

Recently, my brother started a twitter account. I was amazed, excited, and then alarmed. Last night, my wife and I talked about her entrance into the blogosphere as an aspiring novelist, and the various ways to get connected and to promote her books and build a community. And lo, the conversation included some overlap into the distinct worlds I had created for myself. Today, a friend from grad school started following my tweets. The fastest growing demographic segment on Facebook are women over 55. The norm is now that your parents are on the same platforms as you, sending you links, "liking" your status updates, commenting on your posts, and re-tweeting your insights and confessions.

We knew that this, like all trends, was inevitable. That was the whole idea behind it, right? The Influencers and their trickle-down technologies eventually must either move on to a different, less crowded space, or concede that those circles of distinction must at some point become crowded to the point where all personal networks are populated by the people from previously separated spheres of your life.

This convergence of the members of disparate real life and/or digital circles is known as Social Singularity.

The implications of this go hand-in-hand with the past decade's obsession with the notion of the "democratization of exclusivity" or "massclusivity". When we all have access, various things happen. Innovation and evolution become necessary as new platforms are born and grow. The heavily populated social spaces either lose their appeal, or evolve into hubs of active, though uncontrollable communications (see: YouTube & the gross increase of Twitter spam). And most importantly, in a very positive way, the newcomers to the digital social space make the space a more viable place to develop new means of contact and community, as there becomes less education and dispelling necessary when people jump in and experience things for themselves.

you've been pownced

Had a good conversation with friends today. We were discussing the role of connections via social networking sites. The sheer number of networks that have come and gone, or come and don't get used or come and get used and get lost... it's insane. I had postulated that although I "belong" to a number of these networks, when it comes down to it, I only use three.

One is for networking. I build as many connections as I can, I welcome all who find me there.

One is for connecting. I get in touch with old acquaintances, stay in touch with friends, and am careful who I invite within that domain.

One is for dialogue. Spontaneous thoughts, insights, and delights.

And yet, I, like many, am a marked man. Discovered by a friend of a friend of my friend and now they want nothing more than to be connected. But to what end? To take an extra space in a list of names? To have a profile picture collecting virtual dust on my personal page? My hang up with MySpace (for me) was that it was all about numbers. So concerned with how many. It felt entirely pointless. Not everyone approaches it that way, but it feels embedded in the MySpace culture. So, when, say... Ed Cramley, who graduated high school 3 years after I did finds me and wants to be pals, I draw a line. Which is rude, isn't it? What harm would it be to have Ed listed amongst my friends? Well it feels entirely insincere to have Ed's picture listed amongst my "friends". I didn't know him a decade ago, I don't know him today... people aren't for collecting. So I ignore the invitation. Repeatedly, if necessary. Which, again, doesn't do much as far as building karma points.

So we came up with a plan today. A widget or app needs to be built (I'm nominating Phil) that acts as both a personal firewall and a social re-router. It needs to look at the spam-friends (those like Ed Cramley who serve no real purpose in my life at all) and filter them out, rather than rudely, to one of the other dozen social networks that I joined when I was trying them all on for size, and invites Ed Cramley to be my friend over there.

It's a kind of gentle breakup instead of a harsh "no thanks". A kind of deprioritization of social networks. I don't want you near my facebook account, so I'll re-route you to be "friends" with me over on Plaxo Pulse. Everyone happy? Perfect.

Hang on, I just got a reply from someone I haven't been in touch with from undergrad...sonuvabitch...I've just been Y!Mashed.

Making friends the old fashioned way

The debate continues as to which is the more effective way of meeting real friends. The (wildly oversimplified) 2.0 model is that I create my profile, look for other people with similar tags, view their profile and commit with a "poke" or an "invite" or whatever the site's technical term is. Alongside the active seeking is the promise that others are doing the same thing and that hopefully we'll meet somewhere in the middle because we both like DIY projects and The Shins second album. I have made some acquaintances this way, been introduced to a few people, mostly to their catchy, clever nicknames, but sometimes to an actual person, a photo they use to represent themselves in the best possible way and, of course, the list of personal beliefs, faves, etc.

Sunday I was at a baby shower. A real one, not virtual or nuthin'. The host family's husband and I struck up a conversation, and wouldn't you know it, Bill (that's his real name) and I laughed, joked, shared concerns about raising kids, sustained uncomfortable pauses, and downed a beer or two. Time passed quickly and we set up the promise to get our families together for dinner without an event attached. All in all, I'd say a solid connection. I only lament that this doesn't happen very often.

So, herein lies the cryptic quandary. Is there a preferred method of actual (dare I use the term out of its 21st century iteration) "social networking"? Is there greater promise to link yourself in to somebody else, to have the Amazon algorithm let you know that people who like Jack and Megan also like..., or to wait it out in hopes of meeting Bill, sharing a beer and laughter without emoticons or acronyms. The smart money is on the technology. Mine's on reality.

Increasingly I find myself longing for real experiences. The further we get engulfed and embedded in advancement, the less I feel connected, (though the more I am). BUT, I wonder if there is room, space, or logic in the idea of making friends the old fashioned way. I'm all for helping someone build a deck and discovering we share the same interests, but the infrequency at which that happens is far from my 21st century liking. I'd rather have the depth of connection at the speed of a tweet. The paradox is both frustrating and understandable. If Ray Kurzweil is to believed, and singularity is inevitable, is it just a matter of time before the overlap takes place? Or will we deliberately regress and learn to value the arts of writing a letter (yes, with a pen and paper! a what?!?!?!), holding a conversation, throwing a dinner party? I don't know.

But the deeper I become entrenched in my self-selected online universe, the more I long for something real and old-fashioned. Slow, inconsistent, unpredictable, but real.

Got a great tweet yesterday from Phil:

trying to figure out a real use for facebook ... linked in i get, twitter i get, kyte i get, wtf do i need facebook for again?

This sentiment echoed something Ray wrote a few days prior:

I Stumble, Twitter and IM everyday. I LinkIn, Tube, and occasionally Flickr. Just joined Facebook and refused to jump on the MySpace bandwagon. There's a del.icio.us account buried somewhere. And well, I just remembered my Jobster account has been neglected.

Jotting is no stranger. And, I also belong to things that I really don't understand at first glance. I just feel obligated to try it out ... Like Pownce.

There are just so many options out there that the distinction between them is becoming as much of a wall to effective usage as the very ideology of social networking once promised to eradicate. I'm very new to the game, gang, but it appeared to me that the promise of social networking was to create a great equalizing platform, connecting networks of people based on commonalities. At this point, it's a brand race, and Facebook's rise to the platform du jour is a great example of the fact that like everything else, it's about "what's cool" rather than what's right or what's necessary. We're all on the same networks. We're just dragging our friends around asking them the same thing: do you like this better? And does better mean better or newer? Would that work? Do you like this newer?

Which is a longwinded way of going back to Phil's original question, what is the actual value of Facebook? And what will be the actual value of the network that launches tomorrow? What's new here? Tweet me your answer.