Morning Cup O' Joe

The Real Life Social Network

The picture above sums up one of the issues of online social networks today: We have multiple social circles in our offline (read: real) lives, yet when we join a large social networking platform like Facebook, all those circles become one large circle. As wonderfully cute and adorable as my kids are, I know that only a small subset of my Facebook friends really care to see the photos and videos I post.

In the case study above, Debbie had no idea that the comments she posted on photos posted by her college friends who own a gay bar were viewable by the 10-year-old kids in her swimming class.

Another great analogy is the wedding reception. For any of you who’ve gone through the pain of coming up with a seating arrangement for a wedding reception, you’ll understand. Why is it painful? All of your disparate social circles will be in the same room. How do you group them? That situation, to a degree, is what a large social networking platform is: all of your friends from all circles in your life in a large room milling about with you on a pedestal using a bullhorn to make announcements about what is going on in your life.

If you have a moment, I highly suggest checking out this study that was done by the fine folks at Google on social networking. It approaches social networking from a user experience design perspective, but I think the points that are brought to light are beneficial to any user of an online social networking platform.

Nice find, Emilio!

via The Real Life Social Network v2

July 13, 2010 Posted by Mike | General, Philosophy, Science and Technology | facebook, Google, social networks, user experience design, ux | Comments Off