John Dvorak just posted about the fragility of online social networks. I think he missed the point.
He claims that “there is no such thing as a real community online.” There are only “pretend” communities.
I suppose it depends on your definition of community. Communities come together on the Internet all the time–see Wikimedia’s various projects, among others. People still meet, build relationships, and gain synergistic value from one another. I’m IMing a friend of mine right now that I met from an online community.
That specific community is now defunct, and perhaps this is Dvorak’s larger point–that individual social networks value is transitory at best. But he says himself that these things are generational and evolutionary–once there are too many people on Twitter, the early adopters will have moved on to the next big thing.
Someone in the comments pointed out that real communities are just as fragile. Yogi Berra once said it something like: “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” This is true for electronic or meat networking locations–but the network abides. The location is fragile… the network is simply (and wonderfully) mobile.
Preamble:
If I got out of my house in search of a community in the street, I would either get hit by a truck with a horse trailer or meet my garbage man. If I go out into the internet, I can (and do) make friends with Brits, Netherlanders, Germans, and people from hosts of other places, of similar and dissimilar ages, and similar interests. I’ve kept in contact with a guy from the UK for over 8 years now, which is considerable for someone who is only 20 years old.
People can leave “real” communities almost as easily as online ones. My circle of friends from San Luis Obispo county, CA, have all left the area, save one. Thanks to the internet, however, we are still a dreaded “online community”, an impossibility until recently. Dvorak calls this a bad thing?
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Now it is time to split hairs. Dvorak equates a social networking system with a community. If that were the case, why is one of the main purposes of a person’s social networking page to describe their interests, belief system, musical tastes (or lack thereof), etc. ad nauseam?
Obviously, this is because a social networking site is not a community. It is a catalyst (whether a good one or not is a different discussion) for the creation of communities– hence the existence of groups and networks of users on such sites.
A community is a group of people with something in common — more than all having MySpace accounts, that is. That is why so many interests are listed on MySpace profiles– to find people with common interests, that a community may be formed. Merely one’s common sense semantic use of “common”, “community”, and related words shows that a community is an entirely different beast than a social networking behemoth.
These subsets of the social networking site’s population are the communities, and like any community, their longevity and strength are dependent upon the qualities of the people who constitute it.
I think of social networking sites as gigantic, highly-detailed phone books at best. They are for finding people, and then initiating interaction with them, which can lead to the creation of a community. They can be used to maintain communities, but they mainly serve as a means of communicating between members of a community, albeit a highly inefficient means of communication.
I have seen real online communities. massassi.net, for example, formed around the old game Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, which was released in ‘97. Many of the same people are still there on the forums. When a member died of brain cancer at the age of 18, the announcement wasn’t some blurb about a guy nobody knew. Everyone knew him, talked with him regularly, and liked him. Everyone was upset by that, and even rattled.
Dvorak should know better, or he isn’t keeping up with what is really going on. I first became aware of him when I watched ZDTV in ancient times. Does he not know about mailing lists, BBS, message boards, IRC, and other systems? They were around long before the recent “blog” and “social networking” concepts, and tight-knit communities formed and still form on them. Does he even have time to try to become part of an online community? Has he ever tried? His “article” reads more like the rant of someone who doesn’t like seeing something new and complex appear in such a short time (though I would argue that the entire social networking system is inherently incomprehensible, albeit useful). Perhaps he is a closet luddite. Besides the somewhat venomous tone of the article, he also, according to the Wikipedia, criticized Apple for including a mouse with their computers back in 1984. If that is true, it should be enough to torpedo anyone’s trust in his ability to assess upcoming technology.
Whatever the case, he needs to limit his writing to what he can write about in an iron-clad manner. I see many holes that I could pick apart piece by piece, but that would be far too long for this already lengthy comment.
Comment by Connor Clark 05.05.08 @ 952The Fragility of Social Networks…
WingmanX submitted an interesting article: The Fragility of Social Networking Sure, maybe you actually do get to know a few people, and it’s certainly true that people do meet through online chats and even get married. I know at least…
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