
Ask HN: Idea for Next Generation of Social Networking   - Jd
Don't wish to oversell myself or my set of ideas, but I am a potential CEO with a reasonably well-developed set of ideas regarding what could be a generational advancement in online community building and a history of successful project management in the non-profit sector. I also moonlight as a web developer; these days mostly coding in Ruby on Rails.<p>I conceive of this as primarily a project to increase the aggregate intelligence of the world, not to maximize personal profit, and am looking for a person with similar passions and more solid technical background to serve as CTO.<p>One might summarize this idea as a new 'usenet' utilizing proprietary group modelling and related human-driven data filtering.<p>I will provide:<p>(1) The idea (slightly obfuscated, sorry, but I can't tell everybody everything)
(2) Theoretical foundation 
(3) A little bit about me<p>Feel free to skip anything that doesn't interest you.<p>Essential Idea:<p>(1) Model existing social behaviors, including data dissemination, retrieval and especially human layer of information filtering (also mechanical, but the human aspect tends to be neglected. See mechanical turk as an example of a hopeful trend that is not entirely capitalized).<p>(2) Determine inefficiencies in currently existing patterns.<p>(3) Create an online interface (a bit like Hacker News, but not exactly a competitor) that provides an evolving patterns and allows for maximal flexibility in group creation (recognizing also the human element in information filtration).<p>(1) and (2) are essentially already completed and available for review by interested parties, although I do not believe there is a single optimal pattern and will likely need new iterations. (3) is what needs to be completed.<p>Theoretical Foundations (grossly over-simplified) :<p>Modern Western philosophy is presaged on a strong idea of the individual, which is also the foundation of the Western social order (notably democracy), and influences into how we view optimal organization on the web. 'Asian' societies generally have a stronger sense of group identity. While there are serious deficiencies in the Asian model, one strength is that it recognizes the centrality of groups in forming human identity, and the necessity of some group identification for continued societal existence.<p>Traditionally the primary identification was some kinship group. Over time various types of culture developed, usually as groupings within a kinship group. While certain patterns of behavior can develop among any group, culture can only be developed and sustained in certain situations.<p>What are some pre-conditions for the development of culture? First, there must be some degree of leisure, or time for thinking not distracted by other concerns. Second, there must be some form of interaction and exchange of ideas. Thirdly, these forms of interaction must not be clogged by 'haters,' 'trolls,' or other forms of deviants, which means usually the erection of some sort of borders or moderation.<p>I will not summarize Shirky's helpful essays  (or book) here but he provides additional examples of web communities which illustrate the problems and potentialities stated in the above paragraph.<p>A little about me:<p>Studied computer science at local colleges when I was 13-17, then went to a prestigious college and did mostly humanities (religion and philosophy) then lived in China, worked in a bunch of different industries including government and managed the early-stage development of a non-profit and my own small consulting business. I then lived in Japan and Germany (and learned both languages).  I am now 26 and plan to come back to the States soon to work on this project. I also have various connections that could facilitate the raising of venture capital.<p>I've run this by technical professionals more skilled than I, some of who frequent HN and I hope will contribute to this discussion, and there seems to be nothing technically infusible. It is simply a new way of looking at old problems, taking into account the human aspect.<p>While I will be participating in the discussion here, persons are welcome to contact me at joel.anselm.dietz @ google's email service.
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rscott
Honestly, I read through this a few times and I have no idea what in the hell
it does. Maybe I just missed the ball, but I have no idea what your product
would do. Buzzwords galore.

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blurry
Second above, plus - you are a web developer coding in RoR, you've studied
comp sci, you went to a prestigious college and have numerous connections to
venture capital, yet you are looking for a more solid CTO? Something just
doesn't compute :)

~~~
Jd
I'm spread a bit too thin to be a technical genius, like some others I've met
here and there. Besides, I like the people side of the business and would like
to spend more time on that end.

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physcab
Your project sounds interesting, though it's difficult to see what the actual
deliverable will be. It looks like you just want to model social behavior
through innovative ways. I would suggest that you do some practical stuff
first, and forget about "revolutionizing" the industry. Perhaps your time will
be best spent doing some innovative data mining of a social network already in
place. For example, you could easily do some creative things with Twitter's
public feed as many people have shown recently. Second, maybe you want to
build another portal like Friendfeed whereby you could incorporate social
status and try to extract some meaningful data.

This sounds like a fun data mining project, but I wouldn't stray too far off
course if I were you. Instead of making diagrams and presentations, just get
right to work by modeling simple streams of data.

For the record, I do pattern analysis on materials, but I'm interested in
applying the same techniques for other social projects.

~~~
Jd
You hit at the fundamental difference between my approach and others, which
may make mine better or worse (certainly worse if nothing ever comes of it,
and 'revolutionary' if it does and it is a fundamentally new way of looking at
things with some utility).

Here is an example of why I would start with modeling the human side
(essentially sociological) instead of simply modeling the data. Suppose what
we want to model and improve is an academic journal. What will our data be?
Submissions to the journal? Articles published by the journal? Should
corrected articles re-submitted also be included?

What we have is essentially data coming to a node (a human editor) and then
sorted by viability, then sent back to the originators when a certain criteron
is reached (an article that needs corrections in order to be published), the
item is returned in better form, and then various items are collated and
released as a journal.

The essential work here is the human side, and I know of no possible way to
capture the necessary _qualitative_ aspect merely by analyzing the data
stream. For instance, is there anything we can say simply from analyzing
Twitter feeds without attaching labels assigning some worth? We can talk only
about quantity, but not quality. And if we talk about quality (e.g. we create
a point system and posts that Pg or Chad Fowler reads are worth twice as many
points in our system) then we are introducing a human element, that may in
some sense be arbitrary, or even if it is not arbitrary it does not follow
necessarily from the our purely mathematical modeling structure.

Admittedly in my case study, the academic journal, we also haven't discussed
anything about the type of journal and whether or not there is quality of
content. That is because I desire to provide a platform to allow different
groups of people to assign their own value to things they find important, even
if I might not find it especially so myself (i.e. post-modern literary
criticism).

~~~
physcab
I understand the issue you are trying to get at, but I am still unclear as to
the actual deliverable.

It seems like your idea is a mashup of a human-powered element (think Amazon's
Mechanical Turk, ChaCha, or Mahalo Answers) and a computer generated part
(think Google or Artificial Neural Networks/Machine Learning). With the
computer generated part, you can assign weights or penalties to establish some
"worth" (e.g in my Twitter example, you can assign more points to Robert
Scoble's tweets than mine). You can also try to simulate context. (e.g If a
person said they "bought fish" did they actually buy fish or did they misspell
"Phish"?)

So here is my next question. Which specific problem are you trying to address?
Being as clear as possible will help you move to the next step. No one on
Hacker News is looking to steal ideas...I think we all have some
"revolutionary" project we are currently working on. :)

~~~
Jd
Clay Shirky describes that online communities have a natural life cycle in
which they start off small and vibrant and then dissipate as they grow larger.
The perpetual problem is to achieve a persistent high signal to noise ratio.

I suggest that a platform which allows persons to independently form
communities around common interests (when then could generate their own news
feed or journal) will allow new group formation and allow each group to
control what is or is not an acceptable signal to noise ratio in their group.

For instance, 'Nuclear Physicist News' might not resemble 'Hacker News,' might
not resemble 'Recent findings in Biotechnology.' But all of those groups
should be able to exist, fail, and be formed again on a single platform.

What makes the platform part important is that my single identity carries
through all of the different groups I participate in, allowing me to
participate in (and read) more groups, more easily.

In some ways this might be better described as a protocol than a platform and
it could theoretically exist in either form. Part of the reason I want to
communicate with persons more technically gifted than I is about whether or
not this would exist better distributed over many servers with only a single
unified protocol (..ML) or like facebook/your-favorite-social-networking-site-
here.

Here's a restatement of the problem: social networking sites do not currently
facilitate high level discussion.

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physcab
Ok so you want to develop some "high quality" social network then. Why not
just create one on Ning? Ning allows you to create your own social network.

And so what if you create this "high quality" social network. What is the
added-value that someone cannot get through personal messaging, forums,
e-mail, and current social networks.

You also talked about integrating your own identity. How is this different
than MyspaceID, Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and Open ID? These
services allow you to be interconnected so that your reputation and presence
among other social networks is constant.

Lastly, I believe we're going to see a transformation of social networks. I
agree with that part of your initial statement. But this transformation will
arise from a gap in a practical need. You have not fully convinced me that
there is a gap.

So just to give you some brief, unsolicited advice, I would say that you
should look for problems that you encounter in your daily life, and create
some tool to fix them. If its important enough, then your userbase will
follow. I would also research all the different types of social networks and
how they currently function, especially from a technical point of view.

You tend to throw a lot of technical jargon around. I want to give you the
benefit of the doubt, but you have to be clear about your terminology. For
example, when you mention "signal-to-noise" ratio, I think gaussian noise and
signal processing. :)

~~~
Jd
I have also compiled a list of all currently existing social networks and
their shortcomings, but did not include that in this post.

The problems of the academic, related to journal publication, etc., are
problems I face in my everyday life.

I suspect if there is not interest here I will eventually address them from
inside an academic institution.

In any case, thanks for the exchange. I'm willing to share more details
privately, even if all they do is spur someone else to create an improvement
in current methods for information distribution.

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nostrademons
I think you really should create a prototype and test out some of these ideas.
You know Rails; you don't need a super technical genius to test whether
this'll be somewhat useful for people. And you'll find out a lot more than you
would by simply thinking about the problem.

If your prototype is interesting, you'll probably have no trouble finding
talented technical people to help you. If it isn't, you've got more
information to redesign it. Right now, it's really difficult to communicate
just what you're getting at. Don't tell us, show us.

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tokenadult
If you can filter out trolls, sign me up.

 _I conceive of this as primarily a project to increase the aggregate
intelligence of the world_

I can introduce you to a very valuable network of participants for that who
have already been talking to me about forming new online communities. If you'd
like to seed your project with a bunch of people who meet that goal, contact
me through my HN profile.

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nixme
Talk to robg. I think his venture and yours might have some overlap and he
might be open to your ideas.

~~~
Jd
Thanks. We had a discussion about a similar topic a year or so ago.

