

Social Applications are Social Networks - cohomology
http://20bits.com/articles/social-applications-are-social-networks/

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jfarmer
So, I wrote this and I'm afraid of two things: (1) it's too academic and (2)
I'm not sure I believe it.

Hah!

The idea the spurred it is something like, "When you're building social
applications you're building social networks."

The strategies you'd use to build a new Facebook are exactly the same as you'd
use to build a new application _on_ Facebook.

Thoughts?

~~~
ovi256
I do a bit of social network R & D (still struggling to learn sociology, but,
hey, I'm an engineer - their core classes were my electives) and you are right
- it is an accepted fact that I take for granted that social applications are
social networks. Just like cities are the projection on the ground of social
relations, social apps (especially purely social apps like Facebook) are the
projection onto cyberspace of underlying social networks.

Sociologists and other scientists love them because for the first time in
history, people give them data for free, and subjects themselves make the
efforts needed to compile and publish the data. Data is their for the taking!
For exactly the same reasons, snoops too love them. NSA is doing so much
research on social network analysis they could outpublish the entire academic
community.

