2008 Woodie Awards
Open Techknowledgy: What makes up your social graph?
By: Dennis Mongello
Issue date: 8/24/07 Section: Ed-Op
Originally published: 8/24/07 at 2:56 AM EST
Last update: 8/24/07 at 2:55 AM EST
Originally published: 8/24/07 at 2:56 AM EST
Last update: 8/24/07 at 2:55 AM EST
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How do you interact with people on the Internet? Sure, there's the old staples like E-mail and IM, but now people have blogs and are members of several different social networking sites. Why do people have to sign up for so many different sites? Isn't one enough?
The simple answer is no. It's not. We all have a lot of friends, and they are all on different social networking sites. Who is on MySpace? Who is on Facebook? Who uses LiveJournal instead of Blogger?
The sum of your contacts online, in addition to all the social networking sites and systems you use, equate to your social graph. Think about how many different sites you have to login to. Why should we have to go through this inconvenience for our networking? Most importantly, why do you have to sign up with each individual site in order to be able to view these profiles or communicate with the people behind them?
A similar problem has existed for a while: There are tons of IM services. Everyone has heard of AIM, but people in other parts of the world don't take kindly to using something called "America Online." Also, some people have just always used and prefer Yahoo! Messenger or Microsoft's counterpart. Now, with Gmail, you have your Gtalk account to worry about. Here you are, with your AOL screen name and buddy list and someone tells you their IM screen name is blahblahblah@hotmail.com. See if that buddy ever comes online.
The solution was an easy one: make one software program that can sign you in to every network at once. Programs like Trillian, Pidgin and Adium bring all of your IM buddies into a single sign on environment, so why can't the same thing happen for other social networking services and blogging?
This is what Brad Fitzpatrick would like to accomplish. Fitzpatrick is best known for creating LiveJournal. Well, at least, his most well known creation is LiveJournal, even if you haven't heard of the man before. If you haven't heard of LiveJournal, it's a blogging site that predated MySpace. Users wrote an entry, like a journal entry, and people were free to leave comments about it. This was one of the earliest social networking sites on the Web.
The simple answer is no. It's not. We all have a lot of friends, and they are all on different social networking sites. Who is on MySpace? Who is on Facebook? Who uses LiveJournal instead of Blogger?
The sum of your contacts online, in addition to all the social networking sites and systems you use, equate to your social graph. Think about how many different sites you have to login to. Why should we have to go through this inconvenience for our networking? Most importantly, why do you have to sign up with each individual site in order to be able to view these profiles or communicate with the people behind them?
A similar problem has existed for a while: There are tons of IM services. Everyone has heard of AIM, but people in other parts of the world don't take kindly to using something called "America Online." Also, some people have just always used and prefer Yahoo! Messenger or Microsoft's counterpart. Now, with Gmail, you have your Gtalk account to worry about. Here you are, with your AOL screen name and buddy list and someone tells you their IM screen name is blahblahblah@hotmail.com. See if that buddy ever comes online.
The solution was an easy one: make one software program that can sign you in to every network at once. Programs like Trillian, Pidgin and Adium bring all of your IM buddies into a single sign on environment, so why can't the same thing happen for other social networking services and blogging?
This is what Brad Fitzpatrick would like to accomplish. Fitzpatrick is best known for creating LiveJournal. Well, at least, his most well known creation is LiveJournal, even if you haven't heard of the man before. If you haven't heard of LiveJournal, it's a blogging site that predated MySpace. Users wrote an entry, like a journal entry, and people were free to leave comments about it. This was one of the earliest social networking sites on the Web.
