
The Most Important Social Network: GitHub - tuke
http://7fff.com/2012/07/14/the-most-important-social-network-github/
======
cletus
To paraphrase Leonard Nimoy from the Simpsons [1]:

 _The following article is true and by "true" I mean "false". It's all lies
but they're entertaining lies and in the end isn't that the real truth? The
answer is "no"._

We geeks seem to often be susceptible to hype and hyperbole. Someone is really
in love with Github and thinks it's the greatest thing ever and it's going to
change the world. It's easy to get caught up in your own excitement. I get it.
That's fine.

But I have to admit to having some Github fatigue. We've gone through a spate
in the last year of "Github is the new resume", "Github will change engineer
recruiting" and now "Github is the most important social network ever".

In many cases I don't believe the author is being deliberately "linkbaity" but
that's ultimately what it is.

Part of the problem too is that you get a certain about of "bubble thinking"
in tech circles. You see this when VCs get excited about Quora thinking it's
going to be the Next Big Thing [tm] because "everyone" is using it (meaning
"lots of other people in the Valley"). That's what I mean by "bubble".

I play boardgames a lot and it's much like "groupthink" there (an isolated
group of players will evolve a play style and view on strategy very different
from other such groups).

In all of the above cases the cure is just to get out of the bubble and expose
yourself to different influences and views because the end of the road for
this kind of thinking is simply stagnation and becoming out of touch.

Github is great. Their engineers are great. Source control is important. Some
will be able to use it to demonstrate their work ([2] really resonates with
me). All of this is true but let's not go overboard.

[1]: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701263/quotes?qt=qt0332688>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4244420>

~~~
ramanujan
Not disagreeing with you, but here are some ideas on how github could take
things to the next level.

0\. Get Junio Hamano from Google and several of the top git-core contributors,
so they can start releasing open source patches to git that support github's
long term roadmap.

1\. Come up with efficient custom diff functions for a variety of common file
types, not just image diffs but also dbdiffs, mp4diffs, and the like. Github
has already done some work in this area, and a little known fact is that git
already has some support for custom diffs in .gitconfig:

    
    
      https://github.com/blog/817-behold-image-view-modes
      http://man.github.com/git/git-difftool.html
      http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154110/data-versioning-with-git-custom-diff-for-specific-files
    

2\. Next, integrate git-annex for storing huge files in git into git core,
maybe with a configurable option for where to place the files (perhaps on a
github-customized API to S3).

    
    
      http://git-annex.branchable.com
    

3\. Now, with some thought and work, you could start supporting diff-based
workflows in a wide variety of disciplines, including movie, image, and
document editing.

4\. You might also start expanding the range of github to start including db
versioning capabilities. I am convinced that the successor to Postgres will
include schema versioning as a first class capability. One way to do this is
to allow every table to have a list of historical schemas s_i each associated
with the instances v_j that were populated when that schema was in effect.
Then all you need are functions that map from s_i to s_{i+1} to migrate
historical data forward in time.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Well, that's cool. However, these are just incremental improvements and really
don't serve any ideal of github being the most important social network. This
would be more for a thread like "What are some bugs we should fix on Github?"

------
aggronn
What's the point of claiming that GitHub is 'The Most Important Social
Network'? How can anyone make that claim? I feel silly thinking in the back of
my head "But facebook is approaching 1 billion users, how is GitHub even
comparable?".

Twitter gets credit for facilitating the arab spring. Facebook has 1000X as
many users. Even if we want to be 'work' specific, Yammer is used by over 200k
companies for what I assume must be business purposes.

This must be hyperbole. That would make sense.

~~~
eevilspock
Because the thing that overthrows Facebook could very well be collaboratively
created on GitHub. The conflict between Facebook's business interests and its
user's interests is the biggest painpoint and thus most ripe for disruption.

~~~
readme
I hate to say it but Facebook is not going to be overthrown, ever. It's
planted very firmly. Backed by mega corps and huge international banks.

Facebook is down right scary in the way it has permeated the life of almost
every person on the globe. It's monolithic and we have little insight into
what they will actually do with all of our data. A little government +
facebook cooperation and we'll really be a dystopia.

With that said, I don't use Facebook and hope some more people wake up and
smell the coffee too. We need a decentralized network, as that is the only way
to avoid corruption.

~~~
eevilspock
> I hate to say it but Facebook is not going to be overthrown, ever.

Just rhetorical exaggeration, right? But just in case you're that naive: IBM,
Microsoft, Windows, Google. The Roman Empire, the British Empire. Need we go
on?

I give Facebook ten years max. It may already be near its peak.

~~~
readme
IBM, Microsoft, and Google -- None of them have been overthrown.

The Roman and British empires lasted hundreds of years.

Facebook will be around long after you and I are dead.

It's not another myspace or friendster. It's a firmly ingrained institution
that people probably value more than their wallet at any given time.

~~~
nickpinkston
Overthrown implies a zero sum of land, etc. How relevant is IBM to modern
computing? Sure, they're doing some great work in supercomputing, but there's
no monopoly they control like they once did. MSFT has a solid monopoly, but
their relevance is lessening though still influential in some circles. Google
is young/ambitious enough that it has its skunkworks projects - gGlasses is an
extension from search, and self-driving cars is from maps/geo data, but it's
still not really entirely defensible from their central data monopoly.

------
arihant
If you were a designer, you would claim Dribbble instead of Github.

Either way, you would be delusional. Social is just a useful paradigm on the
web. More and more products would use it as default. Just like every site now
has a search box. Github also has a search box. It is not the most important
search engine.

~~~
caseyohara
Google has a social network, and it isn't mentioned in the piece. But I'd bet
there's little doubt Google is the most _important_ search engine.

You're right about Dribbble, but I'd argue GitHub is for collaboration and
Dribbble is for showing off. Certainly people collaborate on Dribbble and
people show off on GitHub, but by virtue of how people actually use the
platforms I think GitHub is more collaborative and more _important_ (at least
in the way the OP posits). Go to <http://dribbble.com/>, click the first
thumbnail, and count the compliments in the comments.

------
DivisibleByZero
Reading this post I get a nice feeling of joy for belonging to the software
community.

Being so entrenched in the software world it becomes easy to gloss over these
details. The outside perspective of this article really shines a light on how
well the software community collaborates and shares.

I can't think of a single community that even comes close to the level of
collaboration we have in software.

~~~
jmduke
Honestly, I had the opposite response. I think the claim that Github is the
most important social network is willfully ignorant of the role
Facebook/Twitter plays in every industry beyond software development -- or,
more accurately, the role Github doesn't play.

~~~
Maascamp
I agree. One of my good friends is a realtor. Facebook changed the way she
does business. It is the source of 80+ percent of her leads and is, quite
frankly, the MOST important social network to her.

Github may be the most important social network for a _certain_ class of open
source developer, but the author's attempt to extend its importance to
demographics beyond this group makes the author sounds as if they're just
trying to stake a claim as an early member of a new "cool" social network.

------
BasDirks
"Facebook! Twitter! LinkedIn! VK! Renren! These are among the most famous and
largest social networking platforms in the world. But are they important? Of
course they are. They’ve changed the way humans interact. But let me challenge
you and ask: Have they changed the way we work and think? I do think they
have, to some extent."

"To some extent" is comically naive. These platforms have played a
considerable part in the youth of internet/earth.

Perhaps the author suggests that github is part of the next phase, which is
more credible.

------
elssar
Well it all comes down to what metrics you use to decide the importance of
social networks, doesn't it.

If you're judging by the ability to interact with your real life contacts
online then facebook is probably the best social network(gah!)

If you think that meeting like minded people & having awesome interactions
with them is more important, then maybe Google+ is the most important social
network.

If you agree with Jane McGonigal that games can help make the world a better
place, then WoW is probably the most important social network.

But if you think that collaboration on software is more important(and facebook
& WoW are softwares), then GitHub is probably the most important social
network. It all depends on what you rate higher.

And putting myself in the shoes of the writer, I think it's the end product
that comes out of social networks, is the metric he's pointing to. While other
social networks directly affect the lives of more people, much much more than
GitHub can ever hope to, the products coming out of GitHub are, or would soon
affect more people than any single social network could hope to do.

Someone out there is building the next facebook, the next WoW, the next Linux,
or maybe the next Google and it's likely that GitHub will play a part in it.

Keeping that in mind, I'd say that yes, GitHub is maybe the most important
social network on the internet.

~~~
qznc
To interact with my real life contacts online, the best social network is
email. ;)

Seriously, Github already plays a part in Facebook [0], WoW [1], Linux [2],
and Google [3]. No need to wait for "the next". However, its part is quite
indirect and it could easily be replaced in all four examples.

The fact that it is based on git makes it inherently replaceable. This is a
good thing and probably a big reason for its adoption. If github is down,
which networking connections break?

[0] <https://github.com/facebook> [1] <https://github.com/Blizzard/api-wow-
docs> [2] <https://github.com/torvalds/linux> [3] <https://github.com/google>

------
SethMurphy
I think the term "social" is being overused here in the context of a startup,
and was probably stuck in the tagline like many buzzwords, with an eye on
marketing. The whole internet is social to a point. I think the term
collaborative is more apt. The words that tended to jump out to me in the
article were collaborative and commentary. He says "GitHub puts the social
exchange at the very center", and I disagree. At the center with my view I see
a strong tool to manage code that enables great collaboration. When you see a
getting started tutorial with Github, the communication aspects are rarely
mentioned. In the few projects I have seen getting popular there are usually
external forces at work (i.e. Hacker News, Blogs, Large Corporate Support). It
may be nice if Github was better at marketing your project. I suspect they may
have to be better at it now and the product will undergo many changes in the
coming year. That substantial portion of that 100m will likely all go to
marketing efforts, not more engineers, which I think is a good thing.

------
rokhayakebe
I believe there are opportunities for many _Githubs For {insert_industry}_

------
azinman2
The article focuses on blending communication & code. While it's great to
build tools that blend them, we can't pretend that other channels and
mechanisms won't be used. Hopefully github will see the importance of doing
that rather than forcing everyone to live inside a github world. Back in 2004
I did a class project called Open Sources [1] at MIT that looked at blending
public mailing lists with public CVS archives (no github at the time). Years
later I see some of these ideas becoming more popular in coding tools -- my
take is that visualization of group history and individual contribution will
become critical as catalysts of open-based works. These top-down summaries
provide a map & narration rather than autistic reverse chronological fine-
grain lists, as well as giving a broader overview as to who an individual is
and what they have achieved.

[1]: <http://smg.media.mit.edu/projects/OpenSources>

------
incongruity
I would submit that the term "social network" has lost almost all distinctive
value.

Github _isn't_ a social network in the way that traditional online social
networks have been viewed – it isn't _just_ about "connecting" and
communicating the way that friendster, facebook and twitter all are.

Instead, it's an online code repository that has social _features_ – in other
words, it's the next step in making our online selves a more effective
extension of our off-line selves, doing work, building things, but doing it in
the context of a social group – just like we do in the off-line world, more
often than not.

This is an example of a niche concept becoming widespread enough that it
almost becomes table stakes rather than a notable feature.

That's still pretty cool – but again, I think it means that the term "social
network" is losing its distinctiveness.

~~~
law
> That's still pretty cool – but again, I think it means that the term "social
> network" is losing its distinctiveness.

Good. The term should lose its distinctiveness. Currently, ``social'' closely
relates to friendliness or geniality, but its Lockean definition pertains to
``society as a natural condition of human life.'' Although ``societal
networking'' may be the more appropriate term in certain contexts ( _e.g._ ,
those outside the scope of friendly or genial conversation), ``social
networking'' nevertheless remains correct. The exceptionally broad definition
of the word ``social'' effectively portends ambiguity when discussing social
networking, so a presumption of distinctiveness isn't warranted.

------
munchor
I don't really agree with the claim, but I'd love to see Github enter other
areas of science like Physics, Maths, Chemistry, etc. Not just programming and
computer science. That would be great, Github could work as a center of
science all around the world.

~~~
tuke
Obviously with $100M cash, big things will be coming for GitHub. It is hard to
imagine that they haven't thought about other collaborative communities.

~~~
Newky
Will big things be coming? I hope they use that money to grow on the core
things they are good at rather than try to capture markets which don't need
capturing.

They have a unique position in that almost 100% of its users can only say good
things about it (bar maybe Torvalds).

I want small things from Github, glorious small things.

~~~
aurelianito
With this level of funding, they can try to achieve both small and big
objectives simultaneously.

------
unreal37
I would argue that 10 million+ people have gotten jobs through LinkedIn [1].
And getting a job equates to at least $40,000 a year in income, and a direct
improvement to people's lives. The existence of LinkedIn has been a part of
~$400 billion a year to the world's economy. I think Github is a tiny tiny
tiny fraction of that in terms of its real-world effect on peoples lives.

[1] LinkedIn has 161 million user accounts, and assuming 5% of them have
gotten jobs through the services which could be low. Around 4 billion
candidate searches a month are done there. <http://press.linkedin.com/about>

~~~
simonbrown
That assumes LinkedIn helps companies/workers fill positions/get jobs 1 year
sooner than they otherwise would have (if the pay stays the same).

------
mcbaby
While I'm sure Andreessen Horowitz feels some tech-world pride in this
investment, they are still a venture capital firm. This article is a bit too
sensational, self-loving to really portray the importance of the investment.

I think TechCrunch nailed it in their article today, where they wrote, "Think
of it as a filing system for every draft of a document." Github right now is
limited to code-sharing. But it's potential is so incredibly huge. Like the
article stated, imagine applying it to PSDs, Word Docs, Excel sheets, any
document imaginable. IMO that would be THE killer enterprise prodcut.

~~~
theorique
It's not really limited to code sharing - any version of a text file can be
versioned in the same way (e.g. the raw LaTeX code of revisions of a book or
other document).

Granted, this is still largely of interest to STEM geeks, so extending its
capabilities to binary format versioning might lead in very interesting
directions, as you point out.

------
cjdrake
If Github can figure out how to serve customers who want to do version control
on cat pictures, then I think the link title would have some merit.

------
samstave
The most important social network: GitHub ... (as long as you're a developer)

Clearly my mom has no reason to know github even exists.

~~~
mistercow
>Clearly my mom has no reason to know github even exists.

Your mom probably also has no reason to know that the Haber—Bosch Process
exists, but it's still one of the most important scientific developments of
last few centuries, even to her.

~~~
samstave
You're comparing github to the Haber-Bosch process??!

While I think that is ridiculous, your claim appears to imply that even though
my mom is not aware of github, its existance is as important that a major part
of our civilization's sustainability relies on it?

No, thats just plain stupid.

Anyway - my original comment was that github is only valuable as "the most
important social network" to a very narrow portion of the populous.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
The funny part about this is that most software that the generally public
deals with regularly is not on Github anyway and even the ones that are
existed just fine for many years before Github so it's not as if there is some
contingenct on Github or something.

------
nerdfiles
I believe the thrust here is that Source Code Management has given us a
template for Source Content Management.

