A site that visibly promotes how many ’friends’ you have turns friends into commodities, creating an economy where you are motivated to make as many friends as you can. That’s not a good idea because the utility of these sites suffer as social networks become too densely populated.
Kevin Fox of Gmail & FriendFeed on User Experience Design (via Rebecca Cottrell)
The more I’ve pondered it, the more I’ve started to feel that the social applications that have had the most utility and long-term staying power for me have been the ones that implement social features in the most lightweight way.
(via buzzandersen)
I agree with Kevin and Buzz's sentiments, but I don't think the blame can soley rest on the applications or their features. If feature X reaches Y saturation then utility drops by Z. The easy way out is to reduce Y by reducing functionality.
While I'm all for simplifying, the baby may be in your bath water.
In the end responsibility lies with ego. It decides you need a big list of friends and everyone that friends/favorites/follows you cares about what you say.
To me, the more interesting and rewarding UX questions revolve around giving ego a helping hand.
How do you create a culture of personal responsibility within your community?
Can the structure of your tools imply and enforce values?
Reducing functionality is one of many components in that structure. It's a logical, binary, and common one. The rest will likely be unique, fuzzy, shifting, and overlapping.
A statement like "visible friends = commodity = bad" only accounts for a small portion of the larger picture. It's all science and no art.
All interfaces for humane interactions need art.
(Originally re-blogged @ sutter.tumblr.com - Moved here for readability)
How come the same isn't true for a service industry strike?
Is it because those unions and their members aren't as internet savvy as Hollywood writers? Would they be better off with ongoing coverage on Twitter?
Or is it that the writers strike is easy. It doesn't require much for solidarity. A consumer of television never looks for the highest quality at the lowest price. TV and movies are ubiquitous. They will always be there. They deal in large amounts of money. No one thinks things are going to get more expensive if the writers "win". It's a rich mans game. There's no responsibility in it for the consumer. There's no loss. Re-Blog and fight the man.
The service industry is often times a poor man's game. That hotel you found for cheap on Orbitz is cheap because the person making your bed and throwing away your trash is struggling to stay above the poverty line. That hotel you love because it's nice to treat yourself to a weekend of luxury cost more for 2 nights than the person cleaning your toilet and changing your towels makes in a week. There is responsibility in it. Fuzzy difficult non-absolute responsibility.
The exact sort that the internet would be fantastic for talking through...
If it wasn't so busy Digg'ing photos of striking writers and debating the pros and cons of delaying 24 mid season.
