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The Social Graph is Neither

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Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#41

Post by statictype »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #31
statictype wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume they had the technical skills to do it So basically a nerd with social skills?

Please. For the purposes of this conversation a "nerd" means what the OP wants it to mean, which is at least "someone who knows what a 'graph' is". Whereas the technical skill required to build a basic electronic social network is "can you dial a phone?" Been that way for sixty years and more. For a dramatic musical rendition of the social networks designed by your parents (oh, wait, I mean your grandparents , maybe…

I'm not sure what you're trying to address here. I don't disagree with any of what you said because it doesn't seem to address my point.

You're giving examples of people using social networks. I (and the person I'm responding to) am talking about people building the infrastructure to host social networks. Using your examples, the inventor of the phone and sms would be more appropriate.

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#42

Post by statictype »

daenz wrote: post #18
statictype wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume they had the technical skills to do it So basically a nerd with social skills?

I'm trying to figure out his argument. He's implying that someone with good social skill would suck at designing a social network, but seemingly for more reasons than they just don't have the technical ability. Or maybe that's all he's saying.

He's implying that to build a social network, you would have to be technically adept enough to do it properly and nicely.

If you have the chops to do it, you're almost by definition, a technology nerd of some kind. (Yes, the 'popular' and 'nerd' sets are not mutually exclusive so I guess you have a point but you know what I'm getting at, right?)

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#43

Post by joe_the_user »

Hmm,

I seems like the post is saying "The Social Graph" isn't a graph 'cause it is a multi-graph with different kinds of connections. That part seems obvious.

But the "it's not social part" is more saying "it's not something to publicly mess with", ie, take the question of signaling interest seriously. That's true but the thing remains a social graph.

I would put it another way. The social graph exists, touching it can be dynamite, yes, can breach some boundaries, yes, publishing a connect is further social act, yet. But technology is about breaching boundaries. Facebook doesn't allow the touchy, fine-grained quality of real world friendships - and there are advantages to this. It has created a lot of connections which wouldn't exist before it. Sure, further refinements may make things more nuanced as in the real world. But the crude, glad-handing Internet world is now also the real social world and won't be going away. There are ways that this is quite good.

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

redemade wrote: post #4

> Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender. exactly.

I disagree.

It might be selection bias on my part, but as far as I've seen if someone is able to comprehend a concept like social graph, he's on his way to becoming a nerd. Even being able to handle social relationships on abstract level[1] require insights of mathematical concepts, on the level that is not taught to majority of human population.

That's why I dislike all those 'nerds suck at XXX', whether it's about maths, physics or computer nerds. All of those groups are good at maths, which is basically applied thinking, and thus is applicable not only to computers, but to real life as well. So, given a problem and no domain expert around, I'd definitely trust nerd or an engineer more than anyone else.

[1] - as in, go meta and talk about things like social graphs, how they evolve, transform, while having a clear model in ones head.

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#46

Post by TeMPOraL »

neilk wrote: post #20
davidjohnstone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did like that sentence, but I can't help but think it's wrong. The author of this article is probably as much of a "computer nerd" as any person at Facebook/wherever, but they can identify all sorts of problems with the "social graph", so the problem isn't nerdiness. The problem, as the author also points out, is that real life is very complex, and you can get an 80% solution by dramatically simplifying it. Besides…

I think Maciej is brilliant and so is this piece, but I do wish he didn't so often play the "you're all dysfunctional nerds" card. Also, there's an unstated assumption that in order to write software that is useful socially, one has to be very social. This sounds like the arguments people used to have in the mid-90s about whether a program could ever replace a librarian. Well, it didn't -- but it didn't need to. I th…

> Also, there's an unstated assumption that in order to write software that is useful socially, one has to be very social. This sounds like the arguments people used to have in the mid-90s about whether a program could ever replace a librarian. Well, it didn't -- but it didn't need to.

Another example: programmers of Deep Blue didn't have to be good at playing chess. They just had to understand the rules and the concept of search trees.

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#47

Post by feral »

andrewflnr wrote: post #34
feral wrote: post #29

Lots of good, interesting ideas in that post. A few comments: In general, what data you capture, always depends on what you want to do with the data. Any data model is an abstraction, which discards a lot of information. This simplification is what makes the data model useful. Of course, storing social relations as an undirected, graph with a single type of edge, as is done in Facebook, is a gross simplification of r…

Facebook has a heck of a lot more info on relationships than an undirected graph with a single edge type. In the front end alone, they now have a directed "follows" relationship. In their backend, they're keeping track of how much you pay attention to people, comment on their posts, click their links, etcetera, and using it, among other things, to decide what shows up in your news feed and what is silently dropped. S…

Yes, of course they do; they have vast amounts of data; click streams, likes, comment text, etc.

But I guess I'm saying that the core metaphor, with which Facebook did much of its early growth, was that two people are 'friends', or are they are not; and that you see the activity of your friends, and sometimes see activity, and get recommendations, from the friends of your friends.

They built many iterations of the product, and got a very long way, by exposing a very simple social graph metaphor to their users. Even though that model drastically simplifies the world, it has proven to have a lot of utility for users.

Maybe now, because the users are consequently more educated about social networks, a more sophisticated metaphor would go further.

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#48

Post by araneae »

Ugh, I hate titles like these.

It's not a graph? Of COURSE it's a graph. It's just a very complex one. Just because you could make many such graphs representing the same relationships doesn't mean it's not a graph.

And it's not social because you're missing someone's crush? Uh, no. It's still social, just incomplete.

A better title for this would have been "The Social Graph is incomplete and complex."

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#49

Post by akmiller »

araneae wrote: post #48

Ugh, I hate titles like these. It's not a graph? Of COURSE it's a graph. It's just a very complex one. Just because you could make many such graphs representing the same relationships doesn't mean it's not a graph. And it's not social because you're missing someone's crush? Uh, no. It's still social, just incomplete. A better title for this would have been "The Social Graph is incomplete and complex."

A better title for this would have been "The Social Graph is incomplete and complex."

A more accurate title perhaps, but definitely not a better title!

Re: The Social Graph is Neither

#50

Post by vdm »

juddlyon wrote: post #26

Two things struck me: - the quality of thinking displayed in this post - what is in the world is it doing on the delicious clone I signed up for? This is the same guy that writes about scaling hardware, no? Keep it coming.

Posts from Maciej and Bret Victor on the same day, goodbye productivity...
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