Social networking is currently flawed – we all know this.

We build ‘friends’ lists with too much ease, often with no regard to relevance, and then have the pain of managing that list 6 months down the line when we realise it offers us little value.

Managing our online lives has become almost a full time job so the possibility of being able to interact in temporary social groups is exciting and removes much of the burden.

There is, however, very much a place for a persistent, focused circle of friends and acquaintances – just as in life – and this circle should be built upon and nurtured every opportunity we get. As I have mentioned before, it is human nature to stick with what we know hence our circle tends to be largely replicated across a multitude of services and networks even when not entirely relevant.

Some attempt to amass as many followers as possible, almost like a badge of honour, and are enticed by the ever present “grow your followers” sites.

Numbers aren’t everything – we also know this.

But there is still an obsession with score: how many followers, how many retweets, likes, shares. The social web is still full of those wishing to have their ego stroked and sites such as Klout are taking full advantage, comparing us with our peers and reinforcing our superiority or inferiority complexes depending on our result.

Influence

Klout is right to say that it is the interaction with our followers that indicates our true influence and not just the number of followers we may have but - at the same time - a small, well engaged audience might still not compare  with a larger, less focused one.

If one person retweeted every single thing I write and clicked on every link I posted it would be deemed totally influential for that person (if not a little creepy) but as the range of influence is limited it is virtually worthless.

But Klout is flawed as we have seen with the Beyonce debacle where an account attributed to Beyonce Knowles achieved a Klout score of 50 purely based on followers and was reported as having over 500 retweets despite never sending a single tweet itself.

Numbers do have a part to play but not in isolation, those numbers must be targeted and relevant which makes a recent trend in the tactics of social startups worrying.

Size matters

Sites have taken to offering earlier access to their service based on the number of new recruits you sign (direct referrals) and also those that your sign-ups recruit (indirect referrals) – a social ponzi scheme.

Connect.me was so successful with this method of generating a viral interest that the security company Sophos considered that the sign up site might have been some kind of malware. Facebookalternate.com, speaku.com and dabble.in have all followed suit leading to a flood of tweets and shares asking you to reserve your place.

The rush to recruit is becoming an internet popularity contest potentially undoing any good through greed. If we are merely getting numbers to secure our early access to services are we really building strong, useful communities or just building castles in the sky – pointless pyramids whose only purpose is to serve those at the top. 

Image by JaiTeK

As I posted last week, the recent release of mobile application Color has caused quite a stir, not because of the app itself but because of the idea it brings to the table: the implicit social graph.

Implicit graphs are being touted as the way forward for the social web as they are more firmly rooted in the here and now, more closely mirroring real life as we are constantly moving through implicit graphs throughout our day.

Implicit social groups are formed around locations, events, ideas, topics and ad-hoc conversations exist for the duration of the event around which the group is formed in direct contrast to the way Twitter normally operates.

Twitter users have already demonstrated ways the service can be used: from elections to sports events to natural disasters it has taken its place at the forefront of instant communication and connection but this has not been structured.

Beyond the hashtag

By going beyond the hashtag and introducing implicit social graphs within Twitter more targeted conversations can be created. We can go beyond just location and group tweets together based on our interests and activities.

One man’s meat is another man’s poison and multiple people at the same event can create noise within timelines; how many times have we seen threats to unfollow people because they are attending a conference such as SXSW or CES – these would be ideal candidates for targeted conversations.

Benefits

The obvious benefit of implicit social groups is keeping track of all related tweets within one place and there should also be an easier way to contribute. By hiding the conversation from the main public timeline we would also reap the benefit of reducing noise.

Revenue potential

Some conversations such as those surrounding sports events and conferences occur repeatedly so the owners of those events may wish to have an element of control over the conversations that occur; this would allow for the possibility of registering your event for a fee to gain this control.

So, how would it be done?

As the post title suggests implicit social graphs could be created by going beyond the hashtag; using some form of code. To keep the nomenclature consistent I would suggest the hashcode. The hashcode would be the target word surrounded by hashes, for example: #SXSW#.

The My6Sense extension for Google Chrome illustrates that additional tabs can be created for the #newtwitter web UI – this same behaviour could be used for implicit graphs created using hashcodes.

Tweeting just a hashcode on its own could open a dedicated tab for that conversation which will display all Tweets tagged accordingly.

The group tab will be a self-contained timeline and any Tweet posted here will not be visible in the main public stream, thus reducing the noise for those not attending the event or discussing the topic.

Tweets will be tagged as belonging to that group if they are either: posted directly from within the tab or from the public timeline provided they are preceded by the hashcode. Tweets could also, perhaps, be tagged within the UI itself to indicate the ad-hoc conversation to which they belong, as below:

Just as with @ replies, the tweets would show within the timeline on your profile should it be viewed directly so that a permanent record can be kept.

Just as with other tabs a drop down could provide the option to close the tab once you no longer need it.

Control

Many conversations will be one-off events and could be created by anyone but, as described above, events such as conferences are repeat events and the opportunity exists to charge for the registration of the hashcode matching that event.

Registration could provide the ‘owner’ with an element of control such as locking the hashcode (so that it can’t be used unofficially) and treating it more like an account. A hashcode could have an avatar and description and the ability to block users from accessing it – perhaps subject to an official review from Twitter staff.

Summary

In short, hashcodes would provide the ability to create ad-hoc implicit social groups within the traditional explicit framework of social networks granting a focus and flexibility not currently available as well as a means to reduce noise within the public timeline.

I had intended this to be pitched directly to twitter but have not been able to find a way to do so. You can view the full idea pitch in this PDF: Going Beyond the Hashtag

Lead image by Jeff

Whether you believe it or not a lot of the current talk centres around whether we are in a new tech bubble. The photo sharing app Color gets $41 million in funding and valuations for social apps are going through the roof.

Recent trade in Twitter shares placed the company at a valuation of $7.7 billion which is an astounding figure and, according to most, far in excess of the actual company worth.

What is value?

Value is not just monetary; value is the benefit we derive from the service, our experience when using it and how it enables us to achieve other goals.

The service is now more akin to a utility and has been invaluable in elections, revolutions and in the aftermath of natural disasters. It is at the forefront of disseminating news quickly and efficiently with the added spin of the personal touch – the news is crowdsourced in real-time.

How can we possibly place a monetary value on that? It has become priceless.

Could we do without Twitter? Probably, but things wouldn’t be the same. Its over-riding simplicity and ease of access are key. The decision to maintain focus on mobile usage, tweeting via SMS and to resist the temptation to expand beyond 140 characters must be applauded.

This ease of use has kept us loyal to the platform, just think of the way we have stuck with twitter through thick and thin – through all the down times and problems, fail whale and all. This is when calls for federated networks first took hold and when many threatened to leave. Other micro-blogging services were poised to jump in to Twitter’s shoes but they disappeared as quickly as they arrived, unable to gain traction even when they were functionally more advanced.

Why should this be? Why should we have stuck so adamantly with an – at the time – failing service?

Afraid of the jump

Unlike a platform war (PC v Mac, iPhone v Android) changing your social network is more complicated. It’s not just a case of changing your applications – which in many cases are the same – but have to migrate your connections, your social circle. If users left Twitter en masse a couple of years ago there would be no guarantee that all of your circle moved to the same alternative. For all our bluster we were afraid to move and, luckily, it paid off.

Image by Nick Sherman

Our offline lives are a mixture of explicit and implicit social graphs; it’s not a case of one or the other, they co-exist and sometimes even overlap.

Our explicit graph is composed of our family and friends while implicit graphs are everywhere and we pass through them constantly throughout our day.

The iPhone and Android application Color has really kick started the discussion around this subject. While it may not have launched to the best reviews it points to an interesting future: removing our reliance on online social graphs in favour of more organic connections based on our circumstances

The biggest issue Color, and any other similar network faces, is getting the number of people using it to a tipping point where it becomes worthwhile.

Without realising it

In life we become part of implicit social circles without even realising that is what they are. Football fans on the terraces have been doing implicit social graph for years, coming together in one place for a specific purpose and interacting for the duration of that event. The graph then dissolves after the final whistle when everyone goes their own separate ways.

On the commute to work regular travellers sitting in the same seats every day talk to each other forming an implicit graph for the duration of the journey. Even while at work people thrown together based on their jobs – a slightly more permanent and repeated implicit graph but one nonetheless.

Could existing social networks such as Twitter and Facebook add an implicit mode? Believe it or not, our usage of these services already operates implicitly right alongside our more traditional, explicit use.

Sport, elections, natural disasters – any time we search on twitter for a specific hashtag we are entering in to an implicit social graph. We use Twitter in different ways for different purposes. Those same football fans may come together online rather than at the game.

I have a saved Twitter search for the hashtag #saintsfc which I use to watch for updates and talk to other fans when Southampton Football Club are playing. The fans join together for a short period due to a shared interest and return to their usual timelines after the match but this type of graph is recreated in a similar form at the next game.

Repeated interactions within implicit graphs can lead to a bleed from the implicit to explicit – once you get to know some of those from the implicit graph they become ‘friends’ and, after a while, can be invited over in to the explicit graph.

Identity

The talk of implicit social graphs ties in with the ongoing discussion over online identity; just as in real life we don’t deal with everyone the same way based on the circumstances. While an explicit graph is structured and familiar and we may feel comfortable with specific boundaries it does not accurately reflect our lives.

There has been discussion as to whether services like Color could steal some of the thunder from the main social players but does this have to be the case? Could existing social networks build implicit graphs into their current frameworks?

Facebook already has elements of the implicit graph; take checking in with Places, for example: as well as registering your own status you are advised who else is “here now”. As I have already mentioned, hashtags are the basis for implicit graphs.

Could the networks build on this and created threaded conversations?

Instead of just checking in to a location or event could you not check in to a timeline for that event? Instead of searching for a hashtag why not subscribe to a separate timeline for that topic outside of the normal public timeline. Just as with Twitter @ replies that don’t show to all your followers those tweets/status updates from the implicit graphs could be hidden from the public timeline – self-contained mini networks.

Size

Twitter and Facebook already have the one thing that Color does not: a large number of users, by utilising these implicit social graphs could become a success.

The social web is still evolving and we may have just seen where it will grow next.

Related post: Going beyond the hashtag – using implicit social graphs within Twitter.

Image by Mark Botham

Some topics never die, they just take a back seat waiting for an opportunity to return to the fore. The call for federated social networks is one of the big ones. Outages, privacy concerns and hamstringing developers with new API rules have all caused the subject to resurface but are the calls realistic?

Having social networks where we can communicate without any single, monolithic company being in control of our data is a great idea – perhaps a utopian ideal – but could they become reality and effectively scale up to millions of users?

Heeding the call

Those behind the push for are generally coming from a vocal minority – the tech savvy – and are not the general populace. Is Joe Public concerned about data portability? Do they even know what it is?

People understand email and sms: simple point-to-point interactions.
People understand monolithic social networks: create an account and can talk to anyone else with an account – write once, broadcast many (or all)
People may not understand federated networks “talk here – seen there (and there, and there)”.

There is an explicit trust with current social networks, we sign up an account and trust the provider not to use those details for nefarious means. The sheer scale of the most popular sites and services tends to indicate to users that those sites can be trusted and there will no consideration otherwise.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published “An Introduction to the Federated Social Network” which explains that rather than giving our details to one company we can give them to our choice of a selection of “profile providers” or even self host as the social software would be open source.

How many people would actually self host their own server (or node)? Not many will either know how to, have the means to or even want the hassle of doing so which means they still have to give their details to someone; it’s just that this someone may be a smaller entity than the current networks and, consequently, may be less accountable than a company like Twitter or Facebook.

The current larger networks are now relied upon by millions including mainstream media organisations, local authorities and government departments and have an obligation to their users. I would argue that our data is safer in the hands of the big players than in those of a multitude of smaller outfits who may come and go as they please as nodes in a distributed network. How do we determine that these “nodes” are reliable?

Scale

If federated social software is open source and can be installed by anyone there is a larger scope for variance, people modifying the code – potentially even planting malware. We, therefore, have an issue of who will police any such network and ensure that all the contributing providers are playing by the rules and are fully compatible.

I don’t pretend to understand how the technology behind a federated network would work but once user numbers grow we will undoubtedly run into capacity issues. Unlike a monolithic network, those capacity issues will be felt by a multitude of providers. Depending on how the technology fits together we could be looking at hundreds of databases, thousands of connections, with any node at risk of failure at any time cutting all those hosted there out of the conversation.

We could face immense data replication issues and potentially lose the immediacy we currently enjoy with a one-stop shop. Remember net-splits in IRC?

The social web is now big business and the major players are looking for more ways to be profitable. Millions of users distributed across multiple providers poses a significant challenge and the initial good intentions of those providers will fade once the costs involved start mounting up. Who is going to pay?

What price?

Once the sordid topic of coin is introduced it is inevitable that providers are going to be protective over their estate and this is perfectly understandable. They are not going to want to share revenue generating opportunities which may lead to a discrepancy in the way providers handle the data they hold.

While I believe that we need greater flexibility with our data that flexibility may come at a price we are not prepared to pay.

Image by Paul Giron