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Social networks are simple, when you really think about them. They’re a landing page for an avatar, a series of posts about you and what you’re doing, and a place to catalog and store your friends and family. They hold your photos, videos, and shared moments. Some of them send messages, and have chat capabilities. Some even have video chat available. You can upload things to make them your own, and pretty it up to represent you, and play games in some cases.

In the earlier part of the 00s the social network was Friendster; it was the grounds for a majority of the features we see in today’s social networks, and social media platforms in a number of ways, much like that stone-age blogging platform, LiveJournal. In fact, not much has changed here, except for business models, marketing approaches, and user trust.

When Friendster was the “it” thing consumers weren’t really on the web. Most of us just finished watching the Internet in this awe-like state of confusion, while millions upon millions of dollars were poured into the first dot-com bubble. To some, the web was actually still thought of as a fad. I know, I know, it sounds crazy.

Then there was MySpace, which gained a lot more traction. Now it’s Facebook, which jumped all over the social network market after a mass-exodus started from MySpace upon the purchase of the company by News Corp. At the time, MySpace didn’t play their cards right. They tried to add too many things to a platform already riddled with issues, cluttering an already bogged down user interface. (*cough*)

The funny thing is social networks are still social networks. They house a profile photo, they hold a history of things you’ve done, cooked, eaten, seen and shared with others on your trip through the cosmos. The only difference now is that data is money, and serious money at that. I can’t downplay Facebook’s reign in the space too much, after all, they hold 800,000,000 objects of consumer data-collection in their vast network. But fact of the matter is social networks are still social networks.

Personally, I’ve never been too incredibly interested in social networks. I had 88 friends on MySpace, and never got into Friendster. When it came to Facebook, I only went to it when I got sick of MySpace (2006 or so) and even then, have only accumulated around 380 connections.

Walled Garden Networks

There’s a fundamental problem with social networks and typically, it’s that they’re contained software platforms that only house your data for their gain. They simply don’t really do much I can’t do with an email list and some interactions over IM, Skype, or in a round of StarCraft 2 or Civilizations. Now, I realize that some people think “email is dead”, which is completely true, given that it’s still the number one way to communicate and share information on the web. The social network layer simply makes everything more organized, really, and also allows for this thing called “discovery”.

Ultimately, though, if you’re on a social network, looking to expand your presence on the social network, the connection should fit your social goals. This is where a lot of liberties take place, and people start to use social networks for “social business”. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard “Facebook me” at a professional networking event. Sorry, but no, Facebook is where I comment on my niece’s homework status updates, or my mother’s check-ins.

Facebook went from college dorm connections to Fan Page and Brand Page, bringing social networking to a whole new level, but I think that’s where they missed the boat entirely. Facebook isn’t designed for businesses to engage with their customers, it is actually designed to do what it initially set out to do, connect friends — just like every other social network before it.

To drive this point home even further, this past week, Facebook showcased “Timeline”, a feature-rich scrapbook layout that will display all-things-”you”, whether you like it or not.

Interest Graph Networks

Interest Graph Network (“Interest Network”) — a network built on, and around, its users’ interests (hobbies, business, job, etc), while still keeping the standard features and functions of a social network.

Personally, I have a professional interest in the Internet. I run a web company, we make and market websites, and generate revenue strategies for online businesses. Combine my company focus with my love for technology and writing software, and you have a biased Internet-loving machine writing this post.

I look at the Internet like it’s a business, and a brand. So when it comes to socializing, I tend to be a lot more selective about who I socialize with, why and where. When it comes to establishing and expanding connections within an interest, however, that’s a whole other ballgame.

When I joined Twitter in March of 2007, I started connecting with like-minded people and shooting the 140-character breeze via the multitude of stages their fruitful API allows us users, and have continued to do so ever since. It’s great! But until late 2009, people didn’t understand Twitter.

The problem is Twitter doesn’t really have a direction in the Interest Graph versus Social Graph networking spaces at all. Thus, it can be either or both, since Twitter doesn’t really have a clear feature-set that drives either direction. I was drawn to the interest-graph properties, because that’s what I saw fit my needs best. You could argue that Facebook could work the same way, but let’s face it — the interface isn’t optimized for anything other than the first thing you see when you first log in, and a handful of very specific things that enhance that experience thereafter (telling Facebook about you).

For what it’s worth, Twitter is simply a glorified RSS reader for me, with a feedback-loop layer mixed in with @replies and retweets (the method of re-sharing what someone posted). Now, Twitter, oddly enough, was the closest to to creating a network that could be driven solely by my interests. The dividing factor between Twitter and MySpace/Facebook was the asymmetrical relationships you could start. An asymmetrical relationship is when you follow someone you want to follow, and you can read their updates, without them following you back.

Facebook, unfortunately, joined this game far too late in the season for me to really get into, so by the time it rolled around, I had already built a good-sized network on Twitter, and didn’t really see a need for it to exist elsewhere.

Now There is Google+

Before those of you who haven’t used Google+ start to roll your eyes, let me just say this very important piece: Google+ is not Facebook. Google+ is not Twitter. They’re not remotely the same, and they service a completely different set of functions for connecting online.

True or false: There is more than one type of connection to a person. (It’s “True” in case you’re wondering).

Google+ hinted at this in verbiage, actually, right from the start, and it’s in practice predominantly as a core feature all the time: Google+ Circles. How Circles work defines what makes Google+ something different.

Perhaps this abstract is simply too abstract to comprehend with ease, since it doesn’t predominantly exist on Facebook or Twitter, and never existed on MySpace. Perhaps it’s just that a majority of people that don’t “get” Google+ don’t have any strong interests that they’d like to focus on. Perhaps the avid Facebook person doesn’t have a hobby they love outside of watching Sunday afternoon football with the buddies, or watching movies.

Facebook tries to care about your interests, but it really doesn’t. It requires that you seek them out, and  has this weird engagement thing wherein you “Like” knitting (for example), and then have a separate page for it. This doesn’t really enhance your experience on Facebook, it simply makes you a member of that hobby, and can write on the hobby’s wall, and post photos, etc.

The experience falls apart when it comes to meeting strangers with that same hobby with ease. I’m not saying it’s not possible to meet new people on Facebook, I’m not saying it’s not simple to engage with strangers on a page about knitting; but what I am saying is the knitting page can have anyone in it, and that page is the hub of communication about that hobby; and let’s face it, once Facebook knows you like knitting, why cater to it after that? They already have the demographic data they need to feed you to the companies seeking out people who like Knitting for their ads and apps.

For the sake of explaining this to death, Google+ has thousands upon thousands of people interested in photography, and all of those people have their own list of photographers they find amazing. When one of those photographers posts something inspiring, it gets reshared, and shows up in my Stream. If I haven’t seen that person’s work before, but it inspires me as well, then I’ll add them to my Photographer’s Circle, and so on, so forth, until an entire sub-network, that I curate, is built around an Interest I have.

To make it even more ridiculously useful, if someone I’ve Circled on Google+ posts amazing stuff from others in one of their circles consistently, and they share that circle publicly, I can actually just add their circle to mine (if they share it). This new feature (rolled out Sept 26th, 2011) ups the ante on building and growing your Interest graph. People aren’t sharing their “Closest Friends” Circle, they’re not sharing their “Parents” circle. People are sharing things like “Amazing Science Writers” and “Technology Experts”. It’s incredible, and — again — powerful.

Is Google+ For You?

Ask yourself a few simple questions:

1. Do you have any interests?
2. Ever want to connect with others who share your interests?
3. Want to break out of the “which profile picture do I upload this week” social networking routine?
4. Do you like to learn and be inspired by like-minded people?

If you answered yes to any of those, and I truly hope you did sign up for Google+. This isn’t some advertisement for Google — 50,000,000 user sign-ups in 90 days, they don’t need my help. Fact of the matter is I hear a lot of “but Facebook this” and “Google+ isn’t that”, etc, etc.

Here’s the offensive

Face it — Facebook is just using you and your desire to gossip about friends, and enabling you to stalk people. It’s wasting your time and your life by giving you mindless games to play and burn money on. It offers you nothing you can’t do elsewhere. It does all this while selling you off as a pawn in some random marketing strategy.

Google+ enables you to grow, teaches you about things you love, and introduces you to people you’ve never even met, from all over the world, who are passionate about your interests — and it does it effortlessly. It’s weird, it’s hard to explain, and it’s (most importantly) nothing like Facebook, thankfully.

Resources for Google+

• Getting Started with Google Plus
• Post Management, Google Plus, and You
• Fast Action Guide to Photo Sharing on Google+
• Photo Sharing and the Google Plus Android App

What I Think About Facebook

• Facebook Rolls Out Confused Focus
• Facebook versus Google
• What Facebook OpenGraph Means For You

09.27.11 • posted in: Technology