Pleased to report: no major changes / Responding to Renren

A quote from Ivy’s old post has stuck with me: “On the Chinese version Renren, sharing of content is more a norm, and my taste and personality is more so determined by the topics I choose to share with my friends so they can define me through the things I am interested in. On Facebook, such sharing culture exists in a lesser extent...”  For a user to come away with such a different experience of the two networks’ culture (especially since one is apparently so closely modeled on the other) is surprising. Perhaps it reveals something else about technological determinism: that there is another level of cultural determinism placed on our SNS, in part a product of government regulation/binds as well as the underlying business models that allow the networks to exist for free to users.

I am quite curious about how massive social networks like Renren operate on the other side of the world, especially as in the coming years that site might be in competition with Facebook and others for advertisers’ money.  I had no idea that Renren was publicly traded, on the NYSE, no less, but despite the fact that it charges exorbitantly for brands to host pages on the site (scroll up to see that Kobe’s big in China), that it hasn’t been doing so well financially lately.  (Especially in light of Facebook’s constantly delayed entry to the stock market – who would have suspected its mysterious Chinese counterpart would break out first?.)

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This is the creepiest part, because 'reading' is a passive action –– they didn't nesc. 'like' these articles. Clicking the links prompts a window that wants to install new Facebook+Publisher apps that seem to function within the SNS itself: what Anil Dash (see below) calls captured content.

Last week in class we talked about how Facebook’s ubiquitous Like buttons also happen to send back data about webpage viewing, even when unclicked.  This week, Anil Dash warned that it is possible that Facebook could begin floating content that was created and posted within Facebook, rather than just linked, to the top of newsfeeds (and presenting unnecessarily alarmist warnings for outgoing links, such as to his own site, despite the fact that he uses a Facebook-Connet powered commenting system). Already, our timelines are no longer being presented chronologically, and so new ways of sorting would not be beyond the pale. I still wonder if there’s a point where users will be fed up with practices that lead to overzealous monetization, but if the alternative is a site like Renren, even more eager to turn a profit, the future remains unsteady.

On the one hand, perhaps the major thing that’s changed about the way I view SNS, is that like when it appears that I was playing devil’s advocate about targeted advertising last week, I actually value pitches that are not wasting my time or the advertiser’s (though there must be a limit).  On the other hand, it’s unfortunate that Diaspora, which began in the very building we have our class, has not even merited a mention in class. It seem that a site, aiming to be everything that Facebook is not, will struggle to make an impact.