Earlier quoted context omitted.
Guess you should write your own blog post. :-)
"The Most Important Social Network: Real Life"
Good one.
The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
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Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#12I don't really agree with the claim, but I'd love to see Github enter other areas of science like Physics, Maths, Chemistry, etc. Not just programming and computer science. That would be great, Github could work as a center of science all around the world.
It could work as a center of collaboration all around the world. Until [Gobbler](http://gobbler.com) came out, I was using Git as a means of version-controlling my music projects (even going so far as to branch and merge the project, my DAW allows me to do this without touching audio files since all changes are saved to a new file). GitHub has shown us that you can create an extremely powerful collaboration tool around Git, all you have to do is design a user interface that's simple, elegant and familiar to those involved. I can't wait to see what other companies do with Git.
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#13If you were a designer, you would claim Dribbble instead of Github. Either way, you would be delusional. Social is just a useful paradigm on the web. More and more products would use it as default. Just like every site now has a search box. Github also has a search box. It is not the most important search engine.
Google has a social network, and it isn't mentioned in the piece. But I'd bet there's little doubt Google is the most important search engine.
You're right about Dribbble, but I'd argue GitHub is for collaboration and Dribbble is for showing off. Certainly people collaborate on Dribbble and people show off on GitHub, but by virtue of how people actually use the platforms I think GitHub is more collaborative and more important (at least in the way the OP posits). Go to http://dribbble.com/, click the first thumbnail, and count the compliments in the comments.
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#14If you were a designer, you would claim Dribbble instead of Github. Either way, you would be delusional. Social is just a useful paradigm on the web. More and more products would use it as default. Just like every site now has a search box. Github also has a search box. It is not the most important search engine.
It could be a very important special search engine, like Google Scholar. Sadly, search on Github is also a topic to rant about.
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#15[deleted]
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#16Reading this post I get a nice feeling of joy for belonging to the software community.
Being so entrenched in the software world it becomes easy to gloss over these details. The outside perspective of this article really shines a light on how well the software community collaborates and shares.
I can't think of a single community that even comes close to the level of collaboration we have in software.
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#17I would submit that the term "social network" has lost almost all distinctive value.
Github isn't a social network in the way that traditional online social networks have been viewed – it isn't just about "connecting" and communicating the way that friendster, facebook and twitter all are.
Instead, it's an online code repository that has social features – in other words, it's the next step in making our online selves a more effective extension of our off-line selves, doing work, building things, but doing it in the context of a social group – just like we do in the off-line world, more often than not.
This is an example of a niche concept becoming widespread enough that it almost becomes table stakes rather than a notable feature.
That's still pretty cool – but again, I think it means that the term "social network" is losing its distinctiveness.
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#18I don't really agree with the claim, but I'd love to see Github enter other areas of science like Physics, Maths, Chemistry, etc. Not just programming and computer science. That would be great, Github could work as a center of science all around the world.
Obviously with $100M cash, big things will be coming for GitHub. It is hard to imagine that they haven't thought about other collaborative communities.
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#19Well it all comes down to what metrics you use to decide the importance of social networks, doesn't it.
If you're judging by the ability to interact with your real life contacts online then facebook is probably the best social network(gah!)
If you think that meeting like minded people & having awesome interactions with them is more important, then maybe Google+ is the most important social network.
If you agree with Jane McGonigal that games can help make the world a better place, then WoW is probably the most important social network.
But if you think that collaboration on software is more important(and facebook & WoW are softwares), then GitHub is probably the most important social network. It all depends on what you rate higher.
And putting myself in the shoes of the writer, I think it's the end product that comes out of social networks, is the metric he's pointing to. While other social networks directly affect the lives of more people, much much more than GitHub can ever hope to, the products coming out of GitHub are, or would soon affect more people than any single social network could hope to do.
Someone out there is building the next facebook, the next WoW, the next Linux, or maybe the next Google and it's likely that GitHub will play a part in it.
Keeping that in mind, I'd say that yes, GitHub is maybe the most important social network on the internet.
Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub
#20The most important social network: GitHub ... (as long as you're a developer)
Clearly my mom has no reason to know github even exists.