Social Networking Progress

[enteirah]

In some ways I can't help but think social networking has gone so far back these days in terms of how people interact with one another. In days gone by, you used to have friendly communities like this on LJ where if there was something which created a lot of food for thought or you had a lot of things on your mind you were unsure of the best way forward, you could post it up here, and you'd often get a healthy raft of responses, debate and advice.

Nowadays, people have to rely on posting castrated-to-140-letter comments to the likes of Twitter which most folks don't even read, or posting stuff on Facebook/Tumblr, where the primary responses seem to be lazy-click 'xyz likes this, xyz shared this'.

We have progressed so well!

Comments

[eliki.livejournal.com]

Frankly I'd have to agree with that entirely. The only reasons I ended up giving in and getting a Facebook page were because I couldn't get a Spotify account otherwise. And I have so many relatives who use it, it seemed (in theory) to be a way of staying in touch with them. Laughably someone else said it was a good way to promote the music projects, but to no surprise that hasn't happened.

But so much of the stuff that appears on there are just snappy little Twitter style posts and comments, or an endless sea of Likes and Shares. There's nothing social about it. The group I'm in on Facebook, for that Talk Talk band, is very lively. Like on LJ in "the good old days" there can be some very in-depth discussions. But then you'd hope so on a group for a band, if the fans are genuine fans. The general FB areas are just so sparse. And I can't help thinking it's carried on through to places like LJ. People mostly don't want to take the time to read anything longer than a few words, or they just post a simple "cool" or somesuch.

If we're going to replace face to face talking with braindead zombies all gazing into their iPhone screens and grunting at the bus drivers, you'd at least expect decent conversation on Farcebook and Twitter. They need a new name for it because "social" networking is going to land someone in trouble with the false description laws one of these days. ;)

[enteirah]

It does certainly seem a very odd state of progress, as even the older tech like text messaging had more interaction involved in it. And I don't believew the whole population has suddenly become so busy in the last 5 years they don't have time to do anything but click buttons now. :S

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I've been saying this for years now.

[enteirah]

Yeah, I'm certainly not coming out with any revolutionary news here!

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Well, there's still plenty of food for thought right here, I'd say. ^_^ Of course, receiving replies can be another kettle of squid..

I'm not sure if Tumblr and Twitter started the trend (not in the sense of "this is the single way in which things are generally progressing", but in the more minor sense of a trend) of minimal effort/involvement, with the former specialising in one-click "replies", the latter quick quips and throwaway miscellania, but they've certainly leveraged that inclination effectively.

I'd cite Usenet as a fair example to back up your assertion. It isn't immediate, as with anything web-based, but being decentralised, there's no single point of failure, no company deciding arbitrarily to swivel their business model around (or go bust), and being fully standards-based, clients are available for just about anything with a keyboard, with whatever features a developer wants to include. Yet, it fell away in popularity quite drastically post-2000.

Myself, I find LJ the best option, with a reasonable (10K? I forget - it's been a while since I exceeded it =:) cap on reply sizes, full threading, bagfuls of icons, arbitrary restrictions on who can view an individual entry, and most importantly, some rather neat folk to natter and argue with. ^_^

(Oh, is that a new bug? Editing a comment - here, to remove a surplus "s" - reverted the icon to my default)

[enteirah]

I suppose there's not many folks left, so as a consequence replies can be very sporadic from readers that are left. Though I am glad at least LJ does still permit the full replies and though they seem to be gradually dipping into the instant gratification style interaction more and more to keep pace with competition, don't look likely to ever ditch that. It's refreshing just being able to type replies with full meaning, without having to constantly find places to trim out a word without too badly butchering them just to fit into a character limit.

Though on the subject of bugs, I do sometimes find journals where the entire comments section wont load and instead a spinning loader just sits on the page. So whilst they may never intentionally remove it, there's a chance LJ will completely break the comments system one of these days!

[bruno-meles.livejournal.com]

I guess that maybe people's attention spans are getting shorter, so they tend to prefer more instantaneous things like what you mentioned.

[enteirah]

Well attention spans on places like LJ were always a bit up and down anyway. But in general there was always a good social environment, which just seems to have evaporated more and more the more we're told the popular social networking sites have developed. Seems very backwards really!

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

I feel more and more like a dinosaur every day. I don't even have a Twitter account, much less a Facebook one, and if and when the evil day does come, it will be because circumstances have forced it upon me rather than because I want it to. My main means of online communication, even now, are LJ, email, a couple of web forums and Usenet. Soon I shall be using words like "newfangled", I'm sure of it...

[enteirah]

The only reminder I even have a Facebook account now is the frequent bouts of spam I get from people on there who've clicked links and had their accounts compromised.

Twitter I've found very variable. It's very handy for keeping up with folks, but it's just so crippled on its chracter limit that it could never be used as a serious communication tool. People always say its like text messaging... but there's a good reason why they rushed to make phones and networks handle chained SMS messages (and not just for more network profit =;))!