On microblogging and such

Antti, a friend of mine, was recently writing about the issues with micro-blogging services like Twitter. He also reflected his own personal usage and identified the requirement to commit oneself to the micro-blogging as of the single biggest issues for him and the services in general. I see the point, but do not necessarily agree on the potential impact that it has for the systems.

Social software like blogs and social networking sites do require some level of activity. If I don't blog anything here for a while, the few readers that this blog has will disappear. I disagree, however, with the notion that the commitment needs to be that big. Even less so with sites like Twitter. If I don't post anything in a while, it doesn't really matter: I might be away from network connectivity or something similar, but I doubt that people would send search parties to find me. I can't help but feel that Antti's example is not necessarily that realistic. The real value from these services comes from the network externalities. The more friends you have using the systems the more you get from them in the form of updates and such. Even if you're not too active yourself, you can still follow what other people are doing. And when you do post something yourself, you're contributing something to the system, making it that much more valuable.

Now, the systems do indeed require activity, but for me this activity comes from intrinsic motivators. I don't blog for others; I blog for myself. I may update my Facebook status or send a tweet to notify other people, but again I do this out of free will, not because I feel that I have to do so. Antti does, however, brush upon one point that is relevant here: if you feel that you "have to" update your blog and if you are driven by external motivators, you are of course a lot more likely to stop blogging and using Twitter than if you were doing it for yourself instead of other people.

While most of the social software these days does benefit from network externalities, I do feel that there is one very tangible threat around the corner. While technically the more information that goes through the network has traditionally meant more value for each node of the network, the same problem lurks nearby that Google has been tackling for the World Wide Web since the mid-90s: creating some sense into the chaos of information tidbits. So the risk is that as our social links go increasingly online, there need to be proper tools to filter and manage the information that spreads in the network. A fine and very tangible example of this is the Facebook phenomenon of quizes: many people feel a need to fill out tons of different quizes to supposedly learn something interesting about themselves. These quiz notifications go out to all of the friends in the network, but even with some hundred contacts the problem is easily that the quiz notifications drown all the other signals in the network and thus actually reduce the value of the network by increasing the noise level and making it more difficult for me to pick up the signals that interest me.