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The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

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Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#31

Post by aggronn »

paulsutter wrote: post #26
aggronn wrote: post #2

What's the point of claiming that GitHub is 'The Most Important Social Network'? How can anyone make that claim? I feel silly thinking in the back of my head "But facebook is approaching 1 billion users, how is GitHub even comparable?". Twitter gets credit for facilitating the arab spring. Facebook has 1000X as many users. Even if we want to be 'work' specific, Yammer is used by over 200k companies for what I assume…

I think the central point of the story is that github is more like a social network than many of us realize. It's interesting, and could indicate some useful future direction for the service. if the story were titled "Github - a major social network" or "Github - more of a social network than you may think", would that change your opinion of the story? It's surprising to me how much of the criticism here on hacker ne…

I don't think the criticism you're refering to is frequently directly at the articles; They're reactions to link-bait. Link-bait depends on sensationalism, which I think is opposite the goals of HN, so people don't respond to it well. Nevermind that its inherently misleading, which isn't a way to endear readers. It hurts credibility, etc..

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#32

Post by dsirijus »

cletus wrote: post #29

To paraphrase Leonard Nimoy from the Simpsons [1]: The following article is true and by "true" I mean "false". It's all lies but they're entertaining lies and in the end isn't that the real truth? The answer is "no". We geeks seem to often be susceptible to hype and hyperbole. Someone is really in love with Github and thinks it's the greatest thing ever and it's going to change the world. It's easy to get caught up i…

Misguided title as it may be, article (successfully) really suggests that GitHub is ignored in studies of social networks and group collaboration, and it shouldn't be, given its productive capacity, as opposed to time-wasting alternatives.

Many sociological and even political models could reference it in their development and study.

Love the Nimoy quote. Will be reused.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#33

Post by aurelianito »

Newky wrote: post #21
tuke wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Will big things be coming? I hope they use that money to grow on the core things they are good at rather than try to capture markets which don't need capturing. They have a unique position in that almost 100% of its users can only say good things about it (bar maybe Torvalds). I want small things from Github, glorious small things.

With this level of funding, they can try to achieve both small and big objectives simultaneously.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#34

Post by eevilspock »

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #28
eevilspock wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the thing that overthrows Facebook could very well be collaboratively created on GitHub. The conflict between Facebook's business interests and its user's interests is the biggest painpoint and thus most ripe for disruption.

> Note also that Linux powers Facebook, Google and much of the rest of the web, and Linux itself relies on GitHub for collaborative developement. Now that is not even hyperbole, but just plain incorrect. Linux does have an official git mirror on github. None of the development of Linux is done via GitHub.

Thanks. I removed the false statement as it was ancillary anyway. That said, in import it was not false. Linux is collaboratively developed using Git, and as Torvalds himself said when he did temporarily move Linux kernel dev onto GitHub, "But hey, the whole point (well, one of the points) of distributed development is that no single place is really any different from any other, so since I did a github account for my divelog thing, why not see how well it holds up to me just putting my whole kernel repo there too?"

I'd not be surprised if he makes a permanent move once GitHub fixes a few things:  https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546.... On the other hand, he is a known control freak.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#35

Post by eevilspock »

readme wrote: post #30
eevilspock wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the thing that overthrows Facebook could very well be collaboratively created on GitHub. The conflict between Facebook's business interests and its user's interests is the biggest painpoint and thus most ripe for disruption.

I hate to say it but Facebook is not going to be overthrown, ever. It's planted very firmly. Backed by mega corps and huge international banks. Facebook is down right scary in the way it has permeated the life of almost every person on the globe. It's monolithic and we have little insight into what they will actually do with all of our data. A little government + facebook cooperation and we'll really be a dystopia. W…

> I hate to say it but Facebook is not going to be overthrown, ever.

Just rhetorical exaggeration, right? But just in case you're that naive: IBM, Microsoft, Windows, Google. The Roman Empire, the British Empire. Need we go on?

I give Facebook ten years max. It may already be near its peak.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#36

Post by benihana »

cletus wrote: post #29

To paraphrase Leonard Nimoy from the Simpsons [1]: The following article is true and by "true" I mean "false". It's all lies but they're entertaining lies and in the end isn't that the real truth? The answer is "no". We geeks seem to often be susceptible to hype and hyperbole. Someone is really in love with Github and thinks it's the greatest thing ever and it's going to change the world. It's easy to get caught up i…

Related TED talk: Beware online filter bubbles.

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#37

Post by readme »

eevilspock wrote: post #35
readme wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to say it but Facebook is not going to be overthrown, ever. It's planted very firmly. Backed by mega corps and huge international banks. Facebook is down right scary in the way it has permeated the life of almost every person on the globe. It's monolithic and we have little insight into what they will actually do with all of our data. A little government + facebook cooperation and we'll really be a dystopia. W…

> I hate to say it but Facebook is not going to be overthrown, ever. Just rhetorical exaggeration, right? But just in case you're that naive: IBM, Microsoft, Windows, Google. The Roman Empire, the British Empire. Need we go on? I give Facebook ten years max. It may already be near its peak.

IBM, Microsoft, and Google -- None of them have been overthrown.

The Roman and British empires lasted hundreds of years.

Facebook will be around long after you and I are dead.

It's not another myspace or friendster. It's a firmly ingrained institution that people probably value more than their wallet at any given time.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#38

Post by unreal37 »

I would argue that 10 million+ people have gotten jobs through LinkedIn [1]. And getting a job equates to at least $40,000 a year in income, and a direct improvement to people's lives. The existence of LinkedIn has been a part of ~$400 billion a year to the world's economy. I think Github is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of that in terms of its real-world effect on peoples lives.

[1] LinkedIn has 161 million user accounts, and assuming 5% of them have gotten jobs through the services which could be low. Around 4 billion candidate searches a month are done there. http://press.linkedin.com/about

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#39

Post by mcbaby »

While I'm sure Andreessen Horowitz feels some tech-world pride in this investment, they are still a venture capital firm. This article is a bit too sensational, self-loving to really portray the importance of the investment.

I think TechCrunch nailed it in their article today, where they wrote, "Think of it as a filing system for every draft of a document." Github right now is limited to code-sharing. But it's potential is so incredibly huge. Like the article stated, imagine applying it to PSDs, Word Docs, Excel sheets, any document imaginable. IMO that would be THE killer enterprise prodcut.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#40

Post by law »

incongruity wrote: post #17

I 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…

> That's still pretty cool – but again, I think it means that the term "social network" is losing its distinctiveness.

Good. The term should lose its distinctiveness. Currently, ``social'' closely relates to friendliness or geniality, but its Lockean definition pertains to ``society as a natural condition of human life.'' Although ``societal networking'' may be the more appropriate term in certain contexts (e.g., those outside the scope of friendly or genial conversation), ``social networking'' nevertheless remains correct. The exceptionally broad definition of the word ``social'' effectively portends ambiguity when discussing social networking, so a presumption of distinctiveness isn't warranted.

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