Small is beautiful

Hanging out on Facebook today is social like going to a party or reunion with 300 people you went to school with is social.

Sure
it can be fun. You run into a lot of folks you know or used to know.
Some you may be happy to see. Others you say a polite hello to, but you
really don’t want to hear about the minutia of their lives, see
pictures of their kids, learn about the struggles they are having at
work.

It’s just not all that interesting. Now imagine that the party happens every day. Phuh!
Today’s
social networking sites are not well suited for intimate and truly
personal social sharing and communication. That’s because social
networks are getting bigger by the minute, and as they grow they are
becoming impersonal and turning into directories of people you know,
with a a “bulletin board” and an inbox.

Or according to a recent
article in The Economist:

...people
who are members of online social networks are not so much “networkingâ€
as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances
who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,†says Lee Rainie, the
director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project

Don’t
get me wrong. I love Facebook and look to my newsfeed as valuable
source of updates of a certain kind. When my “friends†post status
messages that are funny or informative or news articles that match my
interest it provides great value. The same applies to Twitter and other
social utilities. Yet I do not feel comfortable sharing intimate or
personal information in this environment because I would be sharing it
with almost four hundred people ranging from family, to friends, to
high school buddies, to business associates and sundry others. So when
I considered where to share photos from a recent family trip, Facebook
was not an option for me.

Yet I do want my close friends
and family to see and comment on my personal photos. I also want to
post status updates and have various other online social exchanges with
different groups of friends and colleagues.

We need something new, something I am going to call social networks for groups, or just “social groupsâ€.
Social groups are kind of a marriage of the functionality you find in
social portals like Facebook and traditional online groups services
like Yahoo Groups. Social groups provide a way for groups of people
with a real-world connections to engage and share in an environment
where they don’t have to worry about who sees what. Social groups are
for groups of people who already know each other, mirroring “real lifeâ€
relationships and connecting us online.

Against a backdrop of
high unemployment, economic uncertainty and globalism we seek
connection, a sense of belonging and community. Social groups can
support connection and community by giving people who know and care
about each other ways to easily share and stay in touch through private
and intimate ongoing and ephemeral exchanges. Why should there only be
one place to congregate and “be social� And does it make sense that
all your four hundred “friends†are there every time you want to share
something? In real life you belong to different social groups. Some
open. Some closed. Why not online?Social
groups are a natural evolution of the social net. The future of social
networks has to be a future that facilitates sharing and discussing the
things we care about with the different groups of people we care about.
We will belong to many social groups and they will by their nature be
smaller than today’s social networks.

Small is beautiful because small is intimate and because small is personal.

(Image source: i.dailymail.co.uk)