Social convergence, problematic or practical?
Sunday, October 4, 2009 by Simon212
This weeks reading on social convergence seemed to be one of the more relevant articles for a University demographic, with a considerable young population (although there is a growing older demographic), occupying the social network space. Both the concept of social convergence, and the focus on Facebook made it relatively easy to relate to, as a user of social networking sites.
Boyd discusses social convergence as the breaking down of social context, blurring our social networks into one sphere. As a reasonably regular user of such networks, I can understand this concept well. Boyd focuses on the News Feed aspect and the feelings of intrusion and exposure. Personally I am reasonably restrained when it comes to updating my status, and am fairly lazy when it comes to writing on walls and commenting on newly added photos let alone tagging them. This could probably make me reasonably inconspicuous among my social network. This relative anonymity exists in stark contrast to others within my Facebook community, who insist on updating their status every time anything happens in their lives. One possible explanation cold be that they have forgotten their posts will be read by everyone in their social network, people from (possibly) vastly different social contexts and their interpretation may be skewed by the blurred social boundaries that exist online. Perhaps they do not realize that their entire social network may not care that it’s raining, or that they wish summer would come sooner? Perhaps my pessimism is unwarranted, or perhaps I need to use the ‘Hide’ function more liberally. This however poses its own problems; recently a friend of mine contacted my via text message to confirm if I was going out that night as we had organised earlier in the week. I informed him that at such late notice I couldn’t, in response he was startled, as he had made a comment on his profile about these plans and he understood because of this I would have picked up on the situation.
It is becoming assumed that we are all keeping up with our News Feed and deciphering the irrelevant from the important. Are our actions on Facebook reflective of our personality, or am I simply not utilising the potential of sites such as Facebook and subsequently falling behind in my social networks?
Boyd discusses social convergence as the breaking down of social context, blurring our social networks into one sphere. As a reasonably regular user of such networks, I can understand this concept well. Boyd focuses on the News Feed aspect and the feelings of intrusion and exposure. Personally I am reasonably restrained when it comes to updating my status, and am fairly lazy when it comes to writing on walls and commenting on newly added photos let alone tagging them. This could probably make me reasonably inconspicuous among my social network. This relative anonymity exists in stark contrast to others within my Facebook community, who insist on updating their status every time anything happens in their lives. One possible explanation cold be that they have forgotten their posts will be read by everyone in their social network, people from (possibly) vastly different social contexts and their interpretation may be skewed by the blurred social boundaries that exist online. Perhaps they do not realize that their entire social network may not care that it’s raining, or that they wish summer would come sooner? Perhaps my pessimism is unwarranted, or perhaps I need to use the ‘Hide’ function more liberally. This however poses its own problems; recently a friend of mine contacted my via text message to confirm if I was going out that night as we had organised earlier in the week. I informed him that at such late notice I couldn’t, in response he was startled, as he had made a comment on his profile about these plans and he understood because of this I would have picked up on the situation.
It is becoming assumed that we are all keeping up with our News Feed and deciphering the irrelevant from the important. Are our actions on Facebook reflective of our personality, or am I simply not utilising the potential of sites such as Facebook and subsequently falling behind in my social networks?