Friday 1 March 2013

Killing a social network, Facebook shareholder style

Thought this was a really interesting blog post and clearly with Sabisu in mind, I have an interest in how social networks function - or don't.

In brief, the blog post describes research of the now defunct Friendster network that ascribes its failure to the fact that each user had an insufficient number of friends for it to succeed, meaning the 'cost' of to each user of maintaining their network was too high for the 'benefit' it gave them. The low number of friends per user also meant that when users left the network, it wasn't sufficiently robust, leading to a cascade of leavers.

This fits with some of my own research (Strogatz et al) and seems a decent qualitative theory. And though it's obvious that Facebook/LinkedIn shareholders need to see return on their investment, it should also be a warning for any software vendor interested in social networks to keep the noise down.

Here's my thinking.

No offence to my Facebook & LinkedIn buddies but they're clogging my timeline up with stuff that's less and less relevant. Some of it is their 'fault', some of it is Facebook's.

You could narrow the really valuable (in this case, probably I mean 'interesting') conversations I have on Facebook to a very small group. Maybe only 5% or 10% of my 'friends'. The rest is noise.

Adverts are all over the place - side bars and in the feed, with the latter being particularly intrusive and particularly intrusive on mobile.

Game updates are all over the place and Facebook has not yet realised that certain users are never going to go for games. Again, the feed is clogged with irrelevant nonsense.

Social marketing messages are all over the place; "Share/like this to win X". Not interested.

Chain letters are all over the place. "Like this if your a mother/father/potato lover".

Sure, Facebook is free. The apps can be ignored, as can irrelevant status updates...but that misses a key point...

Filtering out the crap takes effort.

Even though that 'cost' tends to zero, it's there and it's irritating. And if you're only getting a few valuable interactions out of your network for a lot of filtering...well, at some stage you're going to cut back on that effort and not really maintain your network.

Like Clay Shirky's 'mental transaction costs' (see 'penny gap') it's not the financial cost that will drive people away. All that filtering costs brain time.

I understand that Facebook and LinkedIn need to monetise their user-base. I understand that adverts are a really easy way to do that. But with all the other nonsense on my timeline, it's getting to the point where I simply can't be bothered.

(Interestingly, my Twitter feed isn't suffering as badly.)