The Most Important Social Network: GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#41

Post by paulsutter » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 8:10 PM UTC

aggronn wrote: post #31

paulsutter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Your criticism of the title would be more credible if you also acknowledged the point he was making. As it stands you came across as dismissing the entire article as stupid.

And I wonder if the hyperbole in the title is really link bait, or just the opposite, troll bait. I'm not sure the title helped the article's ranking on HN.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#42

Post by law » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 8:18 PM UTC

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 think that fluid dynamics serves as an appropriate analogy for understanding social networking. Companies like facebook interact with a force that's very similar to fluid flow and equally subject to the conservation laws. As with fluids, it's convenient to view your community as a continuum of users whose desires are well-defined individually, but vary continuously between each other because of socialization.

From this, it logically follows that changing one aspect of the system could cause ``unforeseeable'' consequences in another. I hesitate to say ``unforeseeable,'' because really it's a complete failure by the decision makers to understand their community's intra-member interactions. So, claiming that facebook isn't going anywhere is flawed, because as soon as the users' needs change, altering one service could be like closing a release valve and increasing the temperature of water in a pipe: eventually, there'll be an explosion.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#43

Post by simonbrown » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 8:21 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #38

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 account…

That assumes LinkedIn helps companies/workers fill positions/get jobs 1 year sooner than they otherwise would have (if the pay stays the same).

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#44

Post by Scrockett » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 8:22 PM UTC

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.

I don't think FB is going out of business anytime soon, but as time passes, I think that it's core value is more like its original vision -- i.e., a social directory. Seems like it'll become a repository of all your social contacts and your virtual passport when signing up for other sites and will cease to be the place where you spend all your time communicating with friends and discovering new things.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#45

Post by nickpinkston » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 8:48 PM UTC

readme wrote: post #37

eevilspock wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Overthrown implies a zero sum of land, etc. How relevant is IBM to modern computing? Sure, they're doing some great work in supercomputing, but there's no monopoly they control like they once did. MSFT has a solid monopoly, but their relevance is lessening though still influential in some circles. Google is young/ambitious enough that it has its skunkworks projects - gGlasses is an extension from search, and self-driving cars is from maps/geo data, but it's still not really entirely defensible from their central data monopoly.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#46

Post by bobwaycott » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 9:04 PM UTC

Scrockett wrote: post #44

eevilspock wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think FB is going out of business anytime soon, but as time passes, I think that it's core value is more like its original vision -- i.e., a social directory. Seems like it'll become a repository of all your social contacts and your virtual passport when signing up for other sites and will cease to be the place where you spend all your time communicating with friends and discovering new things.

Sounds like you're suggesting Facebook may eventually become the next YellowPages. I could see that happening. It's mostly what I use it for anyway—remaining available to people who, since joining Facebook, seem to have forgotten I'm still reachable via phone, email, and IM.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#47

Post by aggronn » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #41

aggronn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Your criticism of the title would be more credible if you also acknowledged the point he was making. As it stands you came across as dismissing the entire article as stupid. And I wonder if the hyperbole in the title is really link bait, or just the opposite, troll bait. I'm not sure the title helped the article's ranking on HN.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on what "troll bait" is in this context. I'm not following.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#48

Post by Maascamp » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 9:24 PM UTC

jmduke wrote: post #25

DivisibleByZero wrote: post #16

Reading 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.

Honestly, I had the opposite response. I think the claim that Github is the most important social network is willfully ignorant of the role Facebook/Twitter plays in every industry beyond software development -- or, more accurately, the role Github doesn't play.

I agree. One of my good friends is a realtor. Facebook changed the way she does business. It is the source of 80+ percent of her leads and is, quite frankly, the MOST important social network to her.

Github may be the most important social network for a certain class of open source developer, but the author's attempt to extend its importance to demographics beyond this group makes the author sounds as if they're just trying to stake a claim as an early member of a new "cool" social network.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#49

Post by tscrib » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 9:26 PM UTC

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.

For ever is a long time. As eevilspock said, I'll take this as an exaggeration rather than literally. However even then I have to disagree. Virtually any prediction we make (pundits, bloggers, analysts too) certainly will be wrong regarding the tech sector. Disruptive technologies are unknown to us until they are surprised upon the general public. Facebook may stay around for a number of more years, or some new tech will push it into non-existance.

The great thing about guessing about the future is that it is free, and you don't get called on it if you're wrong.

Lastly, the only thing we truly know about the future, is that it will be unlike anything we can imagine today.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#50

Post by qznc » Sat, Jul 14, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

elssar wrote: post #19

Well 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…

To interact with my real life contacts online, the best social network is email. ;)

Seriously, Github already plays a part in Facebook [0], WoW [1], Linux [2], and Google [3]. No need to wait for "the next". However, its part is quite indirect and it could easily be replaced in all four examples.

The fact that it is based on git makes it inherently replaceable. This is a good thing and probably a big reason for its adoption. If github is down, which networking connections break?

[0] https://github.com/facebook [1] https://github.com/Blizzard/api-wow-docs [2] https://github.com/torvalds/linux [3] https://github.com/google