Stowe, reading my earlier Multiply rant, responds saying Multiply isn’t spam, and says that we need a statement of purpose for social networks to adhere to.
I’m more pessimistic than he; I believe that Multiply join messages are spam. Now spam has the “I know it when I see it” problem, so to talk carefully about it requires a specified definition. Here’s mine — spam is unsolicited mail, sent without regard to the particular identity of the recipient, and outside the context of an existing relationship.
Anyone sending me mail because I am on a list I haven’t asked to be on; without having a reason to think that I, in particular, would want this mail; and without us already knowing one another, is spamming me. In particular, ads sent to me as a member of a category, no matter how targeted, count, in this definition, as spam. You could be advertising a new brand of gin specially brewed for Brooklyn-dwelling Python hackers who like bagpipe music and that mail would still be spam.
If you adopt this definition, even just for the sake of argument, it’s pretty clear that Multiply fails the first and second tests. I did not ask for mail from them, and they are not sending me mail because they know me — they simply have my address on a list furnished by my friends. (IAQH.*) I think where Stowe and I may disagree is in point #3: do I have an existing relationship with the sender of the mail?
This is, I admit, a judgement call, and to re-phrase what I think Stowe is saying, Multiply is operating in good faith as a proxy for its users. My friends have furnished my address to Multiply, and authorized the service to contact me on their behalf. Thus the incessant messages from Multiply should be thought of as coming from my friends, and not from Multiply itself.
I hope I have characterized Stowe’s view correctly; in any case, I think Multiply fails this test as well, because I think they are engaged in a new form of targeted marketing. Jon Lebkowsky’s farewell to Multiply message includes this observation: “…next thing you know, Multiply was spamming all my Orkut contacts with a brainless marketing letter supposedly written by yours truly, only I didn’t see it until someone said no, no way, and noted the cheerful Muzak inanity of the message sent in my name.”
This is not a reaction of someone operating with informed consent. Saying that the user is responsible for all behavior authorized by the EULA may be legally correct, but is false in practice; Multiply tricked Jon into providing his address book in a way that helped the service bypass his friends’ spam filters, in order to reach them with an advertisement.
Stowe also suggests a manifesto or code of conduct. I don’t think it will help in this case. Multiply has the economic incentives of spammers, whether you define the join messages as spam or some other form of annoying unsolicited and un-opt-outable mail. In the more general case, though, he is on to something.
First, never let someone bulk-mail their address book with a message not written by them. Stowe says this is a necessary feature, because otherwise the barriers to participation are too high. I think the growth of Friendster, one user at a time, undermines this notion, but however hard it makes it, that is a good amount of hard. Getting rapid growth one user at a time is difficult becaue it is supposed to be difficult. Social systems are, by definition, inefficient, and attempts to make them high throughput end up destroying them.
Next, never send a non-member more than M invitations in an N month period, no matter how often their information is uploaded. I’d set both M and N at 2; YMMV.
Finally, have a one-click “Never contact me again, under any circumstances” button in the mail. I’ve implemented a version of this by kill-filing mail form Multiply, but the service should offer it.
Now having said all that, I also think a service that implements those things will operate at a disadvantage to services that spam like Multiply, so long as the goal is rapid growth. A proposed code of conduct won’t be enough — all that will work is a broad refusal to join abusive services, and a deep skepticism about what any such service is willing to undertake in your name.
——
* IAQH — Insert Air-Quotes Here.
1. Bill Seitz on August 23, 2004 1:23 PM writes...
You don't really like bagpipe "music", do you?
(Is there a FOAF property for this?)
Permalink to Comment2. Clay Shirky on August 25, 2004 6:03 PM writes...
I actually do quite like bagpipe music, though more of the up-tempo "Let's rally for another doomed sally across the rubble of Hadrian's wall!" variety than the sonorous and mournful "Jesus Christ is sure is cold up here in the Highlands, innit?" variety.
We even played bagpipe music at our wedding, though when my wife's godmother was late (former Emperoress of Ethiopia, so going on without her would have been a scandale), we ended up subjecting the guests to more strathspeys and reels than might be considered part of a balanced musical diet.
Permalink to Comment3. Adam on August 25, 2004 11:48 PM writes...
Implosion, maybe. And if so it is certainly due to hamfisted efforts like Multiply, or the subcontinental Johnny-come-latest to which I was invited (by the CEO!) yesterday.
But it would appear that there are still those trying to pump life into the corpse, for transparently obvious reasons of their own.
http://www.onlinebusinessnetworks.com/blog/2004/08/25/social-networking-sites-postmortem-premature
Methinks the lady doth protest too much. And for the record, I *love* the pipes.
Permalink to Comment4. Scott Allen on August 27, 2004 9:20 AM writes...
Life into the corpse? Geez, the baby's barely learning to walk!
LinkedIn is probably getting ready to be the first business-oriented site to cross the million-member mark. Meanwhile, online dating sites and sites like Classmates.com and Friends Reunited have multi-millions of members. And how much more compelling is doing business with someone than just connecting with an old college buddy?!?
In your echo chamber, Adam, you seem to forget that the vast majority of internet users don't even know sites like this EXIST yet. There are 300 million internet users in the U.S. -- a billion in the world. And while the topic has pretty well gotten decent press coverage, it hasn't really been talked about on radio or TV yet. eWomenNetwork just started a radio show, and Classmates is starting a TV show.
We haven't even crossed the chasm, Adam. So what if I do have some self-interest in seeing them succeed? It's still what I believe, else I wouldn't have committed the last couple of years of my life to the topic.
Let me ask you, Adam -- how many counter-examples do you need in order to convince you? I have DOZENS of success stories that would have been virtually impossible without social networking applications. As I reported in my post, over 1/3 of active Ryze users polled reported having gotten business there.
So if they're not working for you, I propose that a) you're focusing on the wrong sites (who expects to get business on Orkut?!?), and b) you haven't studied the practices of those for whom they ARE working. Spend some more time on Ryze, Ecademy, LinkedIn, etc. Read the stories of Jenny Meadows, Scott Stratten, Billy McDermott, Bob Jacobsohn, Ajit Jaokar, and on and on and on.
Sorry, Adam, but you're basing your predictions on your own individual experience, in utter denial of the fact that they're working for so many others.
And for the record, I *love* the pipes, too. But don't let them start playing "Scotland the Brave" for SNAs just yet! ;-)
Permalink to Comment5. Adam on August 27, 2004 2:28 PM writes...
"(who expects to get business on Orkut?!?)"
Scott, this is the crux of it, Scott.
My definitions of success, Scott, have nothing - *nothing*, Scott! - to do with business. If you're narrowly defining "success" as "business contacts," Scott, then maybe there's a case to be made that some YASNS are succeeding for some of their members.
But, Scott. My concerns stem more from my belief that "social networking" is precisely *not* reducible to making contacts.
There are those of us, Scott, for whom the spectrum of acquaintance is almost infinitely rich, and for whom there are meaningful distinctions between contacts made in a professional context and those that derive from our manifold other roles.
Show, Scott, me a social-networking site that captures any of the nuance in these relationships; that does so without unduly burdening its users or their contacts; that operates as imperceptibly as recognition; that affords its users the ability to alter the way in which they describe their relationships as those relationships change over time; that is conservative of face for all concerned as it does so; and that is founded on a fundamental respect for its users and for the irreducible mystery that is interpersonal affinity. Show me that, and I'll show you a winner. Scott.
As a matter of fact, let's call that Greenfield's First Law: That whatever else it does, in whatever it does, a social-networking application must be face-conservative for all parties.
Can we agree on that?
Now show me a YASNS that parries the rejection of a request for connection gracefully.
Let's start there, shall we, Scott?
Permalink to Comment6. Scott Allen on August 27, 2004 11:13 PM writes...
Well, Adam, it's clear that we do have very different expectations from our social networking sites. I readily admit that I would like to have some of the features you mentioned, but, for example, the ability to electronically codify the nuances of my relationship with somebody isn't nearly as important to me as the ability to identify people with whom I have a great deal in common and connect with them.
I share your concern about being "face-conservative" -- so yes, I agree. For example, I don't even like being ASKED if I think Marc Canter is "sexy". ;-)
More seriously, though, that is a big issue I've seen in the YASNS -- many people when they first join feel pressured to connect -- as "friends" or "connections" or whatever -- with whoever asks them.
I, on the other hand, feel perfectly comfortable rejecting those requests and turning every one of them into both an educational opportunity as well as an opportunity to connect and actually develop a relationship. I tell people, "Please take this not as a rejection, but as an invitation to start a real relationship, and we can make an electronic record of it later."
My point is, it would be nice for SNS to handle this more gracefully, but I think it's just as much an educational issue as it is a functionality issue. This is a new form of interaction. Most of us have millions of hours of experience with face-to-face interaction, and only a few hundred or a few thousand with online interaction. I contend that it's unreasonable for us to expect to know how to handle these situations well.
I suppose I'm being "transparently obvious" again, but this IS why I have devoted myself to this topic.
But if you've got ideas as to how to solve with computer code the difficulty of an invitation that the recipient doesn't want to reciprocate, I'd love to hear it. I agree that I haven't seen anyone do it yet.
Permalink to Comment7. Adam on August 28, 2004 12:27 AM writes...
I think you capture the dilemma nicely here. I'm coming to believe that it cannot be - at least, not short of a neural net fed on hundreds of thousands of real-world human interactions explicitly evaluated as "polite," "brusque," "outright dismissive," and so forth.
If people are willing to accept the terms of a more schematic mediation - on/off, contact/not contact, sexy/not sexy - then maybe they'll find YASNS of interest and value. I myself am not, and do not.
Permalink to Comment8. Scott Allen on August 28, 2004 2:35 AM writes...
What it boils down to for me, Adam, is that I simply see these sites as a venue for making the connections and then yet another communication channel beyond the initial connection -- mildly preferable to email because the communication takes place in the context of the "space".
The real social aspect of the relationship is, as Stowe puts it, "messy, interpersonal, and innately harder".
Regardless, social network tools, for all their inadequacies, still perform a very simple function that is nearly impossible without them: answering the question "Who do I know who knows _____?" Especially in a goal-oriented business context, that's incredibly useful, even if the nuances of the relationship aren't reflected in the process.
The greatest power of YASNS though, I contend, is what David Reed refers to as Group-Forming Networks. Never before has it been so easy for people to create a group and identify and connect with like-minded people. Yes, this was certainly possible before with, say, Yahoo Groups and Listservs, but sites like Ryze, Tribe, Ecademy, et al., have a steady supply of people ready to jump into the latest group that matches one of their interests.
As an aside, there's an interesting study to be done there regarding the growth rate of groups within YASNS vs. other technologies -- Yahoo Groups, mailing lists, Usenet, etc. Speaking from personal experience, my Ryze network is double the size of my site's email list, and in 1/3 the time. You tell me... ;-)
Blogs, for all their strengths, simply don't have that "group" feel, generally. You don't "belong" to a blog, and "belonging" is one of those fundamental needs we have as humans.
The attempts to codify human relationships, while useful, are not nearly as interesting as the group-forming that YASNS enable. Yes, even Orkut. ;-)
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