Comments on: “hugh’s law”

By: Clint Gordon-Carroll

Clint Gordon-Carroll — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:50:51 +0000

WOW! What a great discussion topic! So many great points from everyone; in one way or another I agree w/ almost everyone.
Greatest cause for early adopter exodus? Just that, they are early adopters looking for the shinier new thing. Social media has to figure out how to reward early adopters for staying; beta testers?
There are some at the end of the early adopters, who are really at the front of the pack of sheep, that leave b/c the lack of acceptance by social media masses.
I think in the case of LinkedIn there are two major problems:
1. One there is NO real way a creating valuable relationships w/o significant interaction and collaboration. LinkedIn doesn’t really facilitate such action.
2. Malcolm Gladwell in his book Tipping Point believes you truly have a limit to the number of relationships you can manage. Social media probably extends that number by 15%, but you are still limited.
Is social media a swamp? Only because we can’t see the total benefit yet, so naturally we become skeptic of its success and durability.

By: vikram

vikram — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:08:20 +0000

too much of a coincidence — after leaving a message on a cartoonist’s facebook entry and then reading a blog about it here. for a brief second, i was a spammer.

By: Iain

Iain — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:45:15 +0000

Amazingly I’ve managed to avoid spam on LinkedIn, but I’ve had one instance of spam on facebook to date. Otherwise though I think that law of yours holds true…

By: Dennis McDonald

Dennis McDonald — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:02:46 +0000

I agree with the comment that what threatens Linkedin is the prevalence of “open networkers” who promote networking connection without really knowing each other. That leads not so much to spamming — which I don’t think is a major problem with Linekdin, unlike MySpace — but to a dilution of the value Linkedin offers because you can’t count on the relationships for certain things. I still like the formality of Linkedin, though.

By: lone gaffe

lone gaffe — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 02:03:52 +0000

Leo Laporte said something about this yesterday.
Charging as little as $1 to join a social web2.0 service almost totally eliminates the bozos who have nothing to contribute. It also eliminates spam and underage people.
The Web desperately needs a real micro-payment system. It needs it more than it needs HTML 5.0

By: Scott Allen

Scott Allen — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 01:13:55 +0000

Right now, the Web 2.0 digerati are moving to Facebook because it's more technologically interesting. A few non-techie very early adopters are checking out Facebook because all the Web 2.0 digerati SAY "everyone is moving to Facebook". When they get there, they find that for the most part, that's not true, and there's only much business conversation on there if your business is Web 2.0 stuff. The reality is that LinkedIn is still an essential business tool for a whole lot of people who don't read blogs, who don't follow Web 2.0, and who wouldn't find any substantial value in Facebook if they went there right now. And it's the typical fishbowl problem when we talk about this in the blogosphere, because we're all the Web 2.0 digerati and early adopters. It's the height of self-importance for Web 2.0 bloggers to think that your immediate circle of friends is representative of the general internet population, or more specifically, the general LinkedIn user base.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:55:08 +0000

It’s all about how you use these tools, isn’t it? Whether you are online or offline or up a gum tree?
Think business cards: some people walk up to you and stuff them in your hand. You never speak to them again. Others will converse with you and, when it’s deemed worth it, you exchange cards…
I classed myself as a relatively un-sociable curmugdeonly character in response to the first wave of all this when having millions of friends was important (which is still going on clearly in facebook, it’s just the justifications have changed a bit). I still do class myself this way, and have concerns that the ‘E’ type (MBTI) behaviour is dominant in many of our understandings of the who/how/what/why/when of online communities — e.g. “we must make the lurkers come out and say something”. Anwyay, that’s a soapbox for another day.
Obviously intimacy and understanding of eachother is more important than quantity for anything of any long term use, so I never make friends with anyone I don’t know — particularly on linkedin which is an excellent professional recommendation and references engine… so if it’s full of gack, I can’t show that page to potential clients, ergo I don’t relate myself to people I don’t care about…
Maybe this is why I don’t get any spam (apart from the relentless new group invites from those who I know who set groups up almost psychopathically)…
It’s a tool. People use it in different ways. Use it in the way you lead your life, and it will reflect that back at you (?)…
But I know this is curmudgeonly.. an

By: John Caddell

John Caddell — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:41:36 +0000

LinkedIn works fine for me, though I don’t care for its attractiveness to “connection whores” who simply want to connect to me to access my network. Therefore I was happy to find out how easy it was to fire a connection (who happened to be a recruiter, as many of the CWs seem to be).
It sure felt good to reduce my network by one.
Regards, John

By: Viola

Viola — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:02:04 +0000

Does this mean that relationships forged in the virtual world are doomed not to last? Does this mean that we simply cannot build a long-lasting and effective global village in the virtual web of networking?

By: Andy Polaine

Andy Polaine — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:01:05 +0000

No it's not, it's the Tragedy of the Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

By: Eric Searing

Eric Searing — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:53:07 +0000

I don’t mind relative spam but get tired of the high school shout outs. The main problems I see with Social networks is that they attract too wide an audience (as stated above).
They need to be more thematic, much the way niche forums are. I’m looking for the over-40 over-weight, frelance web developers network, without high-school “entrepreneurs”.
e.

By: Jon Matejcek

Jon Matejcek — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:16:47 +0000

Hugh,
Your headline 8 days ago said, “Sign up to Facebook or consign your career to the dustbin of history etc etc.”
This, after Kottke dubbed Facebook the “next AOL.” I was inclined to agree with Kottke on this one; social networks are like indie rock bands — cool until everyone else thinks so …
After today’s post it looks like you would agree, too. Or am I missing something?

By: Tim Clague

Tim Clague — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:01:26 +0000

That’s the challenge for us content creators. When you see something become popular then you know it is old hat — and try to do the opposite. Never an easy life.

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:28:49 +0000

It depends whether people want social networks or social networking — the latter are I think more likely to be abandoned because individuals on them are likely to have more contacts and thus are more vulnerable to the network effects of spam.

By: Peter Ralph

Peter Ralph — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:18:31 +0000

Hugh - it's the Dunning-Kruger effect - no known antidote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect