I agree face to face is the highest 'bandwidth' as far as emotions, empathy and resonance....largely based by the immediate interactivity and feedback. Video is next best. Text though in the hands of an accomplished writer can convey depth, due to the time in contemplation. The problem with most sites is there is a general notion of 'friend' which can mean anything from that guy you met a that place one time and had drinks with once to the best friend you've known since... embryos.
Part of it is the context that makes a social network a social network. MySpace is like a party. Facebook is like an alumin party. LinkedIn is a networking smoozefest. All with essentially 2 tiers of communication. Constrast this with LiveJournal, which starts with people using it for their own needs. It is about the only one I'm aware of to have 'friend groups' and privacy. Meaning I can control access to who sees what, or who I read most often or not at all, yet still benefit from the advantages of text: one to many: markup, links etc. Studying the interactino over several years (I was buliding a social network at one time based on it) I was surprised how many varations in permissions pop up. Like I used it to discuss planning a surprise birthday party behind the persons back...since all the people on my friends list were also on her's it made it very easy.... LiveJournal also has polls and surveys to help lock down time/location. etc. Generally I started out with the intention to keep it 100% open, I found though it's tricky because I found out my grandparents, my coworkers, a stalker or two were reading my stuff. It's also hard to ipossible to be honest/open about whats going through ones head, when that person is sitting right by. Thus the only way to have some of these conversations are by more private means, which in someways conflicts with the open nature of the web. Troy. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
