We are growing into a freakish online culture where we need to know what our networks of friends are doing and saying at every moment all day long. You check your Facebook page as soon as the contact lenses are in and I'm sure you've all heard the term "Facebook stalker?!"
In order to stay on top of the social networking frenzy, Mark Zuckerberg posted a Facebook blog demonstrating that Facebook understands these social networks by coining the term "social graph." This term represents the understanding that connections already exist in the in world be them friends, companies, or interest groups and these connections can be mapped. Facebook hopes that social graphing allows the Facebook user to access those connections more easily and feel empowered by the ability to connect to connections perviously held as unapproachable.
While sites like Facebook continue to feed the hungry bear of social networking, they will be pressed to research, test, discover, and unearth what runs the social graphing machine.
I'll take this time to introduce them to Benjamin Waber, invader of privacy and MIT PhD student that studies the way groups interact socially called "reality mining." Waber and his team "track people people using location-aware devices like mobile phones or electronic badges." This data has been used to understand how communication and networking really function in the work place.
The next place Waber can naturally take his research is on-line and with Facebook.
Tracking and mapping us by following our cell phones is just a little frightening when it comes to the impact this has on our privacy. Waber tracked 100 MIT student using their cell phones and "deduced likely future meetings with impressive accuracy."
This just begs me to ask - how badly do we need to connect with each other? People following our every move and trying to determine how we interact just to improve forums like Facebook. I feel like we are already communicating at an intrusive level - I mean how many of us have unfortunately already had our high school reunions on Facebook.
Just knowing that the social networking phenomena is perceived as continuing to grow is going to demand a deeper understanding of social connections and the need to connect. I just worry about how much more our privacy needs to be poked and prodded in order to feed the half awake social networking giant.
It is going to be stupendous to see this idea of Web 2.0 and social networking evolve because just seeing it come this far has been freakishly cool. I just hope that it's direction and understanding does not involve grave intrusions of privacy only for the government to use it against us and handicap us of our own thinking like they have with everything else.
