Defriend yourself!

The term of this week seems to be ‘defriending’. It’s not even in Wikipedia –yet– so it must be fresh. Website Marketing Facts writes about it, a sure sign that it is to be a trend for 2009. Basically, it means you clean up your social network so that only people who you’re actually in a friendly or closer relationship with remain. The basic premises behind this idea is that the value of your social network is higher, if the online equivalent reflects your offline one –or something like that.

It was fast-food chain Burger King who took defriending to a new level. With the Facebook app Whopper Sacrifice you earned a free Whopper for every 10 friendships you ended on Facebook. After a week, Facebook ended the viral as 233.000 friendships were sacrificed.

Facebook sacrificed the Whopper Sacrifice viral

I think the whole assumption that your social network should have only “real friends” is wrong. At least, in my case. My social network is made up of people I’d like easy access to, and who do, like and know things I find interesting, and with whom I’d like to share some of the things I do and find interesting. I haven’t personally met all these people, nor have had contact with them. That doesn’t make their ideas any less valuable to me tho.

The Dunbar Number

So why is the scope and extent of my social graph important for why I use Twitter? For that, I need to introduce you to the Dunbar Number. Dunbar is an anthropologist at the University College of London, who wrote a paper on Co-Evolution Of Neocortex Size, Group Size And Language In Humans where he hypothesizes:

… there is a cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships, that this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size … the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.

The number he calculated was 150. If you carry this number to the social graph, you could argue that the human brain is only able to cope with 150 or so stable relationships, thus anyone with a higher number of friends in any of their networks, has unstable relationships, and are therefore worth less then those with stable relationships. Thus, one should defriend and stabilize his graph. (for more info on this subject, read Christopher Allen’s great blog post The Dunbar Number as a limit to group size)

Source of inspiration

Like I said in my introduction, my online social network is my main access to a lot of inspiration. I have real life and long time friends there, family, co-workers, people I have worked with in real life, people I have collaborated with online, people I haven’t met and would like to meet some day, people I’ll probably never meet but whose ideas, skills and works I admire. I haven’t got stable relationships with 150 of them –probably far less. But they reflect on who I am, and how I like to be perceived, and what I do and don’t do, and what ideals I have and don’t have. They reflect on me.

Now, lets get to the topic of this post, why I use Twitter. Twitter is especially in the picture when the defriending topic sails along, as it is both easy to add people to your network (you just click ‘follow’ and you’re done) and for other people to add themselves to your network (all they have to do is follow you). But for me, Twitter isn’t just a representation of my social graph and an easy way to know what my friends are doing all day, but something else entirely. It is a source of inspiration.

The modern day Hearth

This is something Stephen Fry pointed out in his talk at the Apple Store in London on Apple and Twitter and so forth. He basically said that the human race has a long history of exchanging ideas and transferring knowledge. He was talking about audiobooks, but the same applies to Twitter in my opinion –he is Twitter’s self proclaimed vice-president, as only Barack Obama has more followers then him.

Anyways, he basically says that with the invention of he printing press by Guttenberg, knowledge exchange moved from a social, interpersonal experience into a distanced, individual experience. Before the mass distribution of printed knowledge and experience, there were storytellers who, in different forms –songs, tales, plays, opera’s, etc.- immerse the listeners into the story, thus conferring it’s meaning and sharing its experiences and lessons. The most basic form of this oral distribution is the hearth. Around the hearth the storyteller is in direct contact with his or her audience, and shares not only his words, but also the non-verbal meaning, suspense, experience and even drama. Thus, making it a rich experience, probably anchoring the experience in the audiences minds far better then most books ever could.

This struck me as true, and I immediately followed this logic to my use of Twitter. To me, Twitter is the modern day hearth or village pump. It’s a place where I choose to go to and share my experiences, my daily finds, my emotional states, my inspirations with anyone who is interested –for whatever reason. And I look for other people’s experiences, knowledge, daily finds, etcetera as well.

And the beauty of Twitter –for me– is that it’s not long distance. Yes, it is a-synchronous, but I can reply to tweets, send them a direct message, and start conversations. In other words, the barrier to get in touch with the storyteller is very low. I can easily get in touch and enrich their experience with my own, and even build a relationship.

This is why Twitter for me is such a source of information, experience and inspiration. It lets me see things from a different perspective and surprise me with insights –both good and bad. It is the Social Graph and Social Network stripped of all web-technology-imposed barriers. I interact with other people, not with web applications or websites that aggregate the personal aspect to a manageable social blob. To me, Twitter is the modern day hearth.

I joined Twitter on july 18 2008, so at the writing of this post, I’ve tweeted for 3 months. I joined because I wanted to try out the popular Twitterific app for my iPhone 3G. I started following a few people I know of, as I had no idea which ones of my friends were a member of Twitter. I followed the tweets made by people like Molly Holtzschlag, Dan Cederholm, Jeffrey Zeldman, Jeremy Keith, Veerle Pieters, Dan Rubin, Derek Featherstone. People who I have never met, but whose work I admire.

Why do these people tweet?

Then their tweets started coming in. I quickly found that they didn’t just tweet about their professional thoughts and actions, like they do on their public weblogs and in articles like on A List Apart. They tweeted about personal stuff like what they’re eating and where, and even with whom. And their illnesses, hopes, dreams, desires, frustrations –very personal stuff by and large.

I joined in myself, following their example. I tweet about my itinerary, about my frustrations, about my location and experiences.

But I have no clue why I do this. Or why those people I consider to be sort of my heroes do this. But we all do, and it feels good.

What is privacy?

What bugs me is that I don’t know why these people, who –as leading minds of the web community have a very clear grasp of the internet– would so willingly give up part of their privacy with no apparent social or other gain. It’s definately not exhibitionism, and they also don’t do it to get more friends or expand their social networks –they’re probably at the top of that pyramid already.
Is it then that they subconciously grasp that the notion of a private life is radically changing in todays networked and information-rich society? With profiles, networks, articles, accounts, events, images and sounds spread everywhere, detailing experience, knowledge, desires, interests, habits and friends, what does privacy really mean?

I suspect that there is a shift in the privacy-mindset, from access to private personal information, to control over personal information. The fact that Tweeps control what they tweet about –but by doing this in the public domain, not controlling who has access to this information– provides enough of a feeling of security that makes up for the loss of percieved privacy. Following this assumption, this also means that twittering about personal events is not for everyone.

This still doesn’t answer why they –or I myself for that matter– use Twitter. There are some practical benefits, but not all my tweets are geared towards those purposes. Let met explain a bit thru an anecdote.

Anecdote

The past 3 days I attended the International Semantic Web Conference 2008 in Karlsruhe, Germany (more posts about that will follow!) I went all alone, to a conference about a subject I know very little about, with a very scientific programme. In short, I felt lost even before I arrived.
Therefore, I registered at the ISWC2008 crowdvine network, hoping to find some people who were willing to help me chart through these unknown waters. But none of the other members were familiar to me –except a few of the gurus like Frank van Harmelen.
A professional assessment I did a year ago concluded that I’m not suited for what they called cold acquisition. Making first contact, so to speak. So I knew this would be a challenge for me. And then I found that the crowdvine site has a Twitter section. You could find which members had added their Twitter ID in their profile. Thinking this would be a good experiment, I clicked on ‘follow’ for everyone I saw.
The days before the conference slowly filled with tweets from people I had never met, but hoped to meet soon. And I easily made First Contact (I can be charming if I want ). So I made some new online friends, hoping I could convert them to real life aquaintences at least. And that they’d help me get my bearings during the conference.

The first day of the conference started off as I expected: I knew no-one in a place where everyone seemed to know everyone else. Yes, the semantic web community is close-knit. During the whole morning I was unable to make First Contact. Then, during the afternoon session, I found that one of my Twitter friends was in the same room, and I let him know I was there too. After the session we met up, and he introduced me to some other people, and that got the ball rolling. In the end I met many many people, and the conference was a big succes.

But it wouldn’t have been if I didn’t have done the Twitter experiment.

Ok, that sounds sad, I know. But it did help me make contact to get the ball rolling. Especially in a semi-closed community on a subject that is very new to me (there’s not much I can do for them), this worked very well!

One of the main reasons is that by using Twitter the First Contact wasn’t about the semantic web, but more personal.

So, I don’t have a complete verdict yet, but in the meantime, Twitter is addictive!

IKKI is het zoveelse netwerk waar ik lid van ben, en waar ik een profiel heb staan.
Mijn werkervaring en andere CV informatie staat ook op monsterboard.nl, werk.nl, werkenbijdeoverheid.nl, linkedin.com en in de kennisbank op het werk. Mijn netwerk heb ik ook aangegeven bij hyves.nl, linkedin.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, last.fm, pownce.com… en vast ook wel op andere plekken.
Leuk, die sociale netwerken. Van de overheid (waar ik werk) verwachten –nee eisen– we dat onze gegevens eenmalig gevraagd worden, en meervoudig gebruikt worden. Waarom vullen we dan overal onze gegevens weer opnieuw in? Het zijn toch onze gegevens? En ik heb het toch al ergens ingevuld?

Web 2.0? Nee, eindelijk Web 1.0 (beta)!

Een van de redenen waarom ik de hele web 2.0 hype ontzettend overgewaardeerd vind is dat het helemaal geen nieuwe toepassing of technologie of zelfs gebruik van het ‘oude’ web 1.0 is.
Het web is ontworpen om *brokken informatie* te ontsluiten. Toevallig waren die brokken destijds veel opgeslagen in databases van onderzoeksinstellingen, en gestuctureerd naar rapporten en boeken… Maar er zat een *fundamenteel* nieuw iets in, en dat was de hypertext. Hypertext (links voor de normale mensen) gaan dwars door structuren, en ontsluit stukken informatie op basis van de *betekenis*. Er werd niet naar pagina 6 gelinkt, of naar hoofdstuk 5, maar naar een specifiek stuk informatie, waar dat ook op het netwerk beschikbaar was, op basis van een relevantie die de maker van de link betekenisvol vond. (zo werkt het menselijk brein ook, overigens).
Al die zogenaamde web 2.0 websites zijn nog steeds websites waar je naar toe moet gaan met een browser, en werken met hún structuur en navigatie en definities, en de meerwaarde van het invoeren van al die informatie is ook alleen beperkt tot die website –meestal.

Het échte web 1.0 (ja, dat is geen typefout) is het semantische web. Daarin worden standaarden gebruikt om de gegevensmodellen te beschrijven, en worden APIs ontwikkeld om de volgens-de-standaarden-gestructureerde-gegevens te hergebruiken voor de eigen applicaties, en vervolgens de gegereerde meerwaarde aan de gebruiker aan te bieden in een vorm die de gebruiker nodig heeft. Dat is heel wat anders dan websites waar geld aan verdiend moet worden.

RDF-resume en FOAF to the rescue

Een voorbeeld: voor het beschrijven van CV profiel informatie is er een RDF standaard: RDF-resume. Iedereen kan zijn of haar CV volgens dat model invullen en ergens publiceren, en vervolgens hoeft daar alleen maar naar verwezen te worden bij alle CV sites. Eén bron, die door de eigenaar van de informatie beheerd wordt, die door anderen gebruikt kan worden.
Nog een voorbeeld: FOAF is een RDF standaard voor het beschrijven en publiceren van informatie over je sociale netwerk (Friend of a Friend). Er is een Facebook applicatie die mogelijk maakt je netwerk naar een FOAF bestand te exporteren. Maar als dat ergens staat, kan je daar naar verwijzen voor alle andere netwerken waar je je registreert. Je neemt dan je netwerk mee. Maak een FOAF bestand voor je persoonlijke, en voor je professionele netwerken aan, en klaar is kees.

Maar we moeten ze wel gebruiken.…

Hiermee wordt eindelijk informatie op het betekenisvolle niveau ontsloten, en gaat het stromen. De informatie wordt opgeslagen zo dicht mogelijk bij de bron, en de regie ligt ook daar.
Hiervoor wordt nog geen enkele nieuwe technologie gebruikt, het netwerk is internet (waarmee de toegang tot de informatie is gegarandeerd), de technologie is een vorm van XML, en het is op een betekenisvolle semantische manier ontsloten. Het is ook niet voor niets dat Tim Berners-Lee (de ‘uitvinder’ van het Word Wide Web) vol aan het Semantic Web staat en werkt.

Maar: er is lef voor nodig om dit ook echt te doen. Dus: IKKI, zorg ervoor dat het profiel te exporteren is naar RDF-Resume, en dat het netwerk te exporteren is naar FOAF, en zorg er ook voor dat je deze soort bestanden in kunt lezen. Daarmee maak je jezelf ook echt open, en biedt je nog meer meerwaarde aan de gebruikers.

Let me explain. When just about any blogger comments on the development of the internet and the world wide web, long discussions about web 2.0, web 3.0 and all kinds of concepts usually follow. And when that blogger considers to rename the world wide web into something as obscure as the Giant Global Graph, this normally is greeted with laughter at that person’s expense. Enter the latest weblog post of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. –Huh? Who? Exactly.

When the ‘inventor’ of modern day’s most succesful technology writes a post about the next step of the web –following its original design, but fuelled by the evolution that it has made over the past few years (the www is only 18 years old!), we’d better start paying attention. All this Web twopointsomething crap aside, he explains how he sees the evolution of the internet, the world wide web, and the next layer: the giant global graph.

Basically, the first abstraction layer is what is referred to as the Net. The major benefit of the Net is that it doesn’t matter how your computer is connected and how the cables go from one ‘puter to the other. The Net was/is designed to connect you to any other computer.
The second abstraction layer built on top of that is what is commonly referred to as the Web. The benefit this brought to the masses was that it doesn’t matter where the documents are located physically, but you can access it’s contents anywhere and anytime.

Most people think or assume that this is what the Web 1.0 was all about. Berners-Lee and his people over at the Cern labs wanting to make their research archive freely available to all Cern and associated researchers. As in documents, files, web pages. But –as Sir Tim has explained many times already, they are wrong.

He now explains the ripeness for the third abstraction layer which he refers to as the Giant Global Graph. This graph thing is a mathematical term apparently and he does make some objections to using it –but apparently it’s a common enough term in scientific circles, and as you just saw, that is where his roots are. The Graph signifies the ‘cloud’ of personal data and data relationships that is available on the web today. The term in this context is most often seen with the SocialGraph, which is the sum of all personal friendship relations you have created on all the social network sites out there. Actually, Brad Fitzpartick and David Recordon have a much better definition:

A social graph consists of who an individual is connected to based on the type of connections, such as work, friendship, interests, and location. It differs from a social network, which consists of who an individual is connected to based on the existence/strength of (one type of) connection, such as work. A social graph therefore conceives of connections in a typological way, whereas a social network does so in a binary/spectral way. I.e. a social graph asks what type of connection exists between individuals, whereas a social network simply asks whether the connection exists or how strong it is. Accordingly, a social graph is a more complex/higher-level model of a social system than a social network.

The Social Graph follows the same ideology and pattern as the Sementic Web –the name Berners-Lee gave his continued work on building the web into it’s full 1.0 potential. Basically it means that you –as a user, not as a developer– choose what relationships you have with other people, and that your identity is connected to your other online alter ego’s, and that this includes your network of friends.

For example: you join a social network site by logging in with your OpenID for the first time, and you get a message saying that because you used your OpenID, and because you have made your network relationships part of the public sphere, those friends you have in your network and who are also a member of that social network site are listed for convenient adding to your friends list on that site. And why is this convenient?

Well, it follows the rather simple and thus powerful idea that friends are people too, and that they are not limited to one network site like Last.FM. I mean, my friends are on Hyves (a popular Dutch Facebook-alike site), LinkedIn (because I made them), Facebook (those with international contacts), Last.FM, Flickr, just to name a few. They’re the same people, why should I have to tell each site that I know them?

The benefits of this are obvious, and the potential for new and improved webapplications are boundless for now. But most importantly, this brings the simple yet fundamental point of who owns my data (me!) closer. When implemented correctly, I –the user– will be the one who decides what part of my network I want to share my music tastes with, and what part my resumé. And if this concept goes on, I can share content other then identity and relationships as well, like my photo’s, or my ideas, or my scribbles, or whatever. Data –more importantly, my data, will be portable.

Lets call this the Web 4.0 (3.0 already having been claimed by the mobile content industry). Naah, lets just call it what it really is: the evolution of the Web 1.0. To finally come closer to what it was originally designed to do.