SOCIAL NETWORKING: A Separate Conversation

by Jason W. Bunyan

Neil Postman once said “that media tend to become mythic,” meaning that people are inclined to think of their technological creations “as if they were a part of the natural order of things … [which] is always dangerous because [they are] then accepted as [they are], and [are] therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control.” While social networks, as a technology, are still in their infancy, it could be argued that the medium is becoming mythic for some users. People are beginning to view social networks as cultural fixtures, imbue them with a measure of power and hold certain beliefs about them.

One concept that is symptomatic of this phenomenon is the conversation. In the past few years it has become popular to use this phrase to refer to the flows of information that move through social networks. Effectively reinventing the popular conception of social networks by associating them with a human, speech-based activity, the conversation has transformed the conception of the medium from websites that one signs up for into an activity that we are encouraged to join.

This trinity of ideas – the conversation, the call to adopt and the ‘lest we lose’ reasoning that fuels them – constitutes a gestalt that, when accepted without question, leads people to begin to disassociate themselves from the activity that takes place online. People begin classifying the medium as a separate entity because, in their opinion, it is always there: it’s a part of the natural order of things.

The conversation appears that much more convincing because of the number of people who have adopted social networks. Facebook and Twitter have an estimated 30 million users each, and ready-made social network provider Ning facilitated the creation of 4,000 networks each day in April 2009. The argument that follows is if social networks are arguably the de facto low-cost mediums through which online users share information with one another (email platforms aside), how can the conversation not exist?

Still, while this metaphor is evocative and the numbers are formidable, two facts remain unchanged: however else they may be used, web-based exchanges of information are an extension of human communication, and their existence and evolution will be guided by its users – provided they don’t relinquish this right by bestowing power on the medium and then forgetting, an act that is tantamount to embracing the television.

Becoming enraptured with the myth creates problems for social network creators and users. Network creators who undervalue the role of users’ inborn ability to socialize, or attempt to order users’ interactions, risk designing networks that are restrictive, redundant and short lived. While it is premature to discuss absolutes and best practices for such a young medium, what can be said is that users tend to view poorly functioning networks in the way that the Supreme Court justices view instances of obscenity: they know them when they see them and they respond unfavorably.

Individuals who run with these fallacies often contribute negatively to the web’s ecology. The ongoing creation of social networks creates a low content-to-noise ratio for users and network creators, consumes an increasing amount of server space that may well be contributing to the Icarus Effect, and has left network creators less concerned with curatorial, journalistic and entrepreneurial sensibilities.

While there is no preexisting protocol for addressing these issues, moving forward, any effective efforts will need to be infused with a heightened sense of new media history, personal and social responsibility regarding content creation and the skillful development and use of technology.

Exercising futility
In a one-paragraph literary forgery called On Exactitude in Science, Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges describes a desert kingdom in which the art of cartography had been perfected. To increase the precision of their maps, the empire’s cartographers strove to create them on a scale that was closer to reality. They soon produced a map of one of their states that was so large that it occupied an entire province. When that scale was found unsatisfactory, the cartographers developed a map with a scale of 1:1, and the totality of the map covered the entire empire point for point. Borges then describes the fate of the cartographers’ works:

“The following generations, who were not so fond of the study of cartography as their forebears had been, saw that that vast map was useless, and not without some pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the inclemencies of sun and winters. In the deserts of the west, still today, there are tattered ruins of that map, inhabited by animals and beggars; in all the land there is no other relic of the disciplines of geography.”

Though On Exactitude discusses matters of cartography, the situations set forth in the story are analogous to those experienced by social network creators. Online social networks are designed to approximate interpersonal dynamics that we encounter in real time. Companies expand and modify their social networks to create better experiences and remain relevant. Creators who are unable to strike a proper balance between skillful approximation and replication of true interaction may have short-lived success, but when the next generation of users emerges and finds their network’s functionality lacking or restrictive, network use declines, and what was once an active community becomes a carapace of old photos, outdated personal information and the occasional spammer or late adopter.

Individuals’ reasons for creating social networks are more varied, but often include the desire to get into business, create groups that focus on a topic or to lifecast. The overabundance of personal social networks, meanwhile, generates informational dross and may well be contributing to the Icarus Effect.

The economy is partly to blame. Altruists aside, most of us find social networks appealing because of what they appear to be able to do for us. Social networks appear to be able to earn revenue, offer entry into the market without personal sacrifice or front-end investment (which encourages impulsivity), and represent a way to connect with people and/or practice user engagement without any additional effort.

These assumptions about networks are true in one sense and misinformed in another. It is possible to enter the social network space with little to no front-end monetary investment. As Clay Shirky explained during his Filter Failure talk at 2008’s Web Expo 2.0 NY, the web’s publishing structure is the first departure from the high, front-end investment economic model since the invention of movable type. Publishing is expensive on the front end, and publishers recoup these costs through their sales. The Internet makes curation less important. In this way, this assumption is correct.

However, it is a mistake to conclude that network-based efforts require no front-end investments at all, because the development and maintenance of social networks has several non-monetary costs. If one seeks notoriety, then knowledge of curation and the ability to sell people on the idea of joining your aggregation platform can’t be unimportant. Even if the objective is not gaining mass readership, at its most basic level, social media community management is like being a socialite in the Victorian Era: expect to write often. That cost alone accounts for why so many abandoned networks occupy server space.

While it is true that failing networks slowly disintegrate and server space is regained, this disintegration can take years and, even as the networks falter, multitudes of new ones appear in their place. While we have not noticed any effect on our servers yet, it is not possible to continue this way forever.

Attention, please
In Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, protagonist Randy Waterhouse and an ageless priest named Enoch Root discuss why, from a semiotic perspective, the U.S. won World War II. Enoch suggests that people are guided by the deific symbols they worship, and explains that the Axis worshiped Ares, who represents an aggressive, bellicose, but deeply inept state of being; while Athena, a warrior-trickster, symbolizes the cunning use and creation of technology. Enoch concludes that in some instances Athena-worshipers must stand against Ares-worshipers in order to maintain a balance.

Fortunately, challenges faced by creators and users of social networks do not involve war; however, Enoch’s ideas can be applied to them. In an environment where the need for capital forces people to exchange control of IP for money, imitation is rampant and free market entry is often as simple as registering for an account, it is easy to rush to make networks bigger and more complex, aggregate without thinking or create content without giving thought to its quality.

Where strategy is concerned, online cinematheque The Auteurs deserves consideration because in a brief period of time it has made itself one of a select set of VOD networks such as Jaman that have audiences and avoid these problems.

Founded by Efe Cakarel, The Auteurs was conceived when the ex-Goldman Sachs banker was in Tokyo searching for a website that featured the Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love and was unable to find it. The 11-person company was publicly launched in November 2008, has staff located in Palo Alto, Calif., New York, London and Paris, and describes itself as an online cinematheque for classic, independent and foreign film enthusiasts.

When interviewed for CNN’s June 12 Screening Room piece, Cakarel said he realized that to succeed in his quest to bring quality cinema to the world he would have to enlist some of the industry’s top brass. Argentine millionaire Eduardo Costantini of Costa Films and Hengameh Panahi of Paris-based distributor Celluloid Dreams subsequently became involved with The Auteurs and instilled the site with their film knowledge, paving the way for the site’s collaboration with masters of the vintage re-release, the Criterion Collection.

Each month, the Criterion Collection curates a free online film festival making available classic films from its large library on The Auteurs. Recently, The Auteurs announced their partnership with Martin Scorsese and his “new” World Cinema Foundation — an organization dedicated to restoring lost cinema classics from around the world — to exhibit the refurbished masterpieces online.

Many people do not embark on their journey to create social networks with Cakarel’s background and personal connections, and they may never have the opportunity to form partnerships with organizations of this kind; however, they can still consider some of the notable elements of his approach:

• Lean and skilled team;
• Niche that appeals to body of enthusiasts but has the potential to draw;
• ‘Repelling distinctiveness’ that frustrates competitors’ efforts to imitate;
• Technical innovation and creative prowess for the audience’s sake;
• Affiliations, where possible, with talent that is undeniable;
• Allies, not adversaries; and
• Dedication to service and quality.

Individual attitudes about content are harder to discuss without dredging up generalities, but Borges’ work illuminates one point that could be raised about the use of technology and the nature of good content: everything, in some sense, is a forgery.

Being as we interpret everything we see and retain everything in our minds, everything we see is a representation, every memory is a symbol and at best every social network is a symbol of a real one. But by creating his own story, alluding to Lewis Carroll, and quite possibly the Tao Te Ching, Borges’s forgery acquires quality because its quality speaks for itself and it is interwoven with universal concepts.

The key, then, isn’t to push symbols beyond their limits, but to create social network symbologies that are evocative, utile and thereby capture and hold user attention.

Social media grows up
Social networks have already begun to produce situations that are not easily relatable to historical events. When discussing problems that arose with Facebook in an undergraduate institution in Canada in 2008, Clay Shirky made a compelling argument that sometimes there is no metaphor with which to make new media similar; however, it is possible to retain the spirit and levels of rigor of research and analysis, and work to develop and master a grammar of social networks, rather than falling prey to the effects that they have on their users.

“They say there are only two stories in Hollywood,” says Gavin McGarry, principal of New York-based cross-platform consultancy Jumpwire Media. “Man comes to town. Man leaves town and goes on a quest. Those two stories don’t exist anymore,” he says. “When someone walks into the sunset, they’re never gone … There are kids who will grow up and will never know what it’s like to not find somebody.”

His consultancy, which provides insights to organizations such as the BANFF World Television Festival, is always called to balance its understanding of media history with ongoing research, creativity, and, most of all, the ability to consider possibilities but not be seduced by them.

McGarry cautions against the use of metaphor as a tool to discuss social networks’ challenges due to the youth of the medium. “Maps,” for example, “were around for hundreds of years,” he says – far more than online social networks have been.

Maybe, then, there’s no issue to be taken with Borges’ metaphor, but with our reading of it. The mapmakers in his literary forgery weren’t mere artisans; they possessed a degree of mastery that could well have been centuries in the making. All media tends to seem sophisticated when it’s new, at least to us. It is only in hindsight that we see how far we’ve come, and perhaps we are making the first map. McGarry’s choice of allusion was more evocative: perhaps we are dealing in Model-Ts. Perhaps we don’t know what social networks are even for.

“Each technology that has been built has not been used for the purpose it’s designed,” he says. “You can understand that technology but once you let it out into the real world, what people do with it and how they use it are completely different. People may actually not do too much social [activity] on them … [They use them to] get information that you would get from your newspaper.”

Mediaite.com editor-at-large Rachel Sklar touched on this matter in her article “Twitter, It’s Time To Grow Up,” which explores the implications of the U.S. State Department having to step in to tell the popular platform about the importance of the role it played in the protests against the Iranian election. Online humor network The Onion was arguably more incisive in its June 24 piece, “Twitter Creator on Iran: I Never Intended For Twitter to Be Useful,” in which Founder Jack Dorsey is depicted as saying, “I couldn’t believe they’d ruined something so beautiful, simple and absolutely pointless.”

If we would endeavor to be cunning, we should keep in mind Marshall McLuhan’s observations from Understanding Media: ”The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception … [W]hen we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression, we have only to visit a society where the particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown.”

Within this paradigm, the social network is more than a concept, or a matter of design, but an extension of our beings, one that through our participation eliminates considerations of time and space, and gives humans an extended awareness of events that borders on prescience. In order to understand it, we need to do more than simply say ‘we like it’ or ‘we don’t like it.’ We need to analyze the instantaneous effects that they have on us, and work to understand why.

In McLuhan’s view, one of the results of a fast-paced society is a reversion to tribalism. “[N]onspecialist electric technology retribalizes. The process of upset resulting from a new distribution of skills is accompanied by much culture lag in which people feel compelled to look at new situations as if they were old ones, and come up with ideas of “population explosion” in an age of implosion.”

If we subscribe to this reasoning, it becomes less difficult to understand why as a culture we feel compelled to become a part of the conversation, and McLuhan’s approach, which frequently spans disciplines and history, suggests that our studies of social networks should not be focused on technology alone; they also need to be devoted to better tracking and taking stock of our own perceptions.

Gaining relevance
While as a product social networks are still in their infancy, it appears the media is becoming mythic for some users. One result of this process is that people are beginning to view social networks as part of the natural order of things, and in so doing are becoming somehow less aware or interested in the inherent control they have over them.

Creators who undervalue the role of users’ inborn ability to socialize, or attempt to order users’ interactions run the risk of creating networks that are restrictive, redundant and short lived. Individuals who run with these fallacies often end up contributing negatively to the web’s ecology.

Beyond the issues of user and creator is the greater point that even as we have an intimate knowledge of the networks we create today and a few of them can be considered modern successes, there is no way to know what social networks of the future will be like.

While there is no preexisting protocol for addressing these issues, moving forward, any effective efforts will need to be infused with a heightened sense of personal and social responsibility regarding content creation and its use in technology.

Jason W. Bunyan is a consultant, new media writer for the New York Examiner, and founder of IFN Film and IFN Music — online groups created to serve as resources for festival professionals. He can be reached on LinkedIn or via Twitter at @jbunyan75.

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