社交网络的“悖论”

编者按：Nina Khosla，作为一个设计师，同时也是Teethie创始人。Teethie是一个社会化博客形式的创业项目，致力于构建基于兴趣的社区。

　　近几年来，我们与朋友们在网上聊天的方式发生了根本性的变化。过去，无论线上线下，我们都只看到一小撮朋友在线进行交流。曾经似乎让人提心吊胆的互联网世界虽然布满了陌生人，但我们可以与他们一到去探索这个未知的世界。是的，我们大部分朋友不在线，或至少没有使用同一款产品服务，但是亲密感如此的让人满足以至于我们会去寻找新的内容和新的朋友，我们有这个能力！

　　我们迷恋于各个网站——这些网站能够会让我们产生一种感觉，就是在网站的那头会有一群相互熟悉、曾经相互交流或者是拥有着共同经历的人存在着。就在此时，一些社交网站——特别是Facebook，Twitter——横空出世了！通过与我们熟悉的人成为“好友”Facebook定义了一个社交模式。眨眼间，我们拥有了一打朋友分布于我们曾生活过的地方。既然有与朋友们在社交空间中分享的经历，那么按照正常逻辑推演，在互联网中拥有更多的朋友貌似会丰富这种经历！但是这种推演并没有发生！

　　取而代之，一种新的趋势正在滋长：我们其实并没有注意网络那头的“朋友”。就拿Twitter来说，Twitter曾经是早期用户讨论技术的热门场所。但是，没过多久，你几乎不能读完你关注的所有人的tweet信息。

　　但随着社交网络的延展，人们在Twitter上能够找到更多他们了解和喜欢的人，于是他们开始关注很多人。至此，阅读所有tweets是个不可能完成的任务。事实是，所有的互联网公司都是基于这样的一个假设去开发产品的——你在Facebook和Twitter的朋友太多了，以至于你无法注意到他们每个人的言语。

　　例如，Flipboard，强调其产品特点为能将内容分享给你在Twitter和Facebook的好友。这些公司，甚至是Facebook自己的新闻信息流智能系统，正在帮我们解决由于过分的联系导致的与好友间的生疏——他们正在从我们自己创造的泛滥的信息海洋中挖掘出有用的东西。

　　确实存在着这样一个无人想承认的社交网络悖论：随着社交网络不断增大，我们自己的社交能力却一直在下降！

　　和其他事务类似，社交网络和由此产生的信息都遵循经济学中的供求规律。当字节、照片、链接随着网络的不断扩张而增加，这些东西的价值也会不断降低。

似乎这解释了新的产品带给人的兴奋。当很少的人群正在使用一个应用，例如Foursqure，我们可以随时了解好友的踪迹。从小的规模来看，了解这个信息并期待别人也能够看到它不知不觉让我们都觉得是个秘密。这让那些Twitter的早期使用者们觉得不可思议。但是随着朋友数量的增加——特别是超过150这一个神奇的 Dunbar’s number——这个魔咒便解除了。按照这种规模，我们几乎无法轻易地掌握所有人的行踪。当我们的连接数超过150时，任何事物都变成了简单的评论——正如真实的交谈已然成为了我们的负担，因为我们的精力真的很有限！

　　译者注：Dunbar’s number 被认为是个体能够和周围的人维持稳定社会关系的理论上限值，而这种社会关系是指群体中的人相互认识并且知道其他人之间的关系。这一理论的支持者声称,当一个群体的规模超过了Dunbar’s number的话，就需要更多法律、政策、规则去维持群体内稳定的凝聚力。

　　曾经的小社区群体已经变成了一个庞然大物，其中充斥着各种无意义的Foursquare签到和滥用的标签。神奇的是，社会化的联系并没有因为这个网络而溢出；相反，信息溢出了。曾经认为社交网络很有意义的唯一原因就是在很小的规模下，社交网络会像一个社区那样运作。但是在大的规模下这个社区群体就会被肢解。

　　谁引领我们进入了社区：社区，与个体有着分明的界线，总是存在于大的关系网络情境下，且总是在灰飞烟灭中变得熟悉。社区及其对应的网络空间，是我们与实体世界的关系相联系的唯一方式。我们的足球队、工作场所、街道、城镇等，都有其各自的社区。我可推测，这是让虚拟世界变得可管理的唯一策略。

　　社区让我们能从一个个体和一个独特的视角去观察。我们了解我们正在交谈的人，这似乎是没什么大不了的事儿，但是正是它把我们的交流都hold住了——这是类似于你对着一个虚无缥缈的世界咆哮和与面前的某人交流的显著区别。

　　实时tweet运动比赛状况和参加一个国家级的滑板运动比赛有什么区别？发一个tweet并不是一个实际的经历，仅仅是作为一个无足轻重的观众广播了这样的一件事儿。当我回想我曾经tweet的这类内容——“我读了一篇非常精彩的文章，check一下”，“将要乘飞机”或者“进球了”！

　　这些并不是分享经历——他们仅是我的经历，我想与你分享，但是你可能并没有此经历——我看那篇文章时的想法或满足、那种登上飞机的感觉、那种看到比赛扳平了的紧张情绪。或许您能够自己去比较这些亲生经历后的记录；这是大多数Twitter交流所呈现的，但是这种经历最后其实是无法分享的。

　　这个与社区中的讨论又有所不同。这种交流是不以任何人的个人经历为话题的，而是社区内集体共同的爱好。交流就是一种体验。每个评论都源于社区内大家共同的情感体验，尤其是那些大家共有的情感诉求。

　　这种追溯和表达共同情感的习惯恰是那些幽默的“网络段子”的诱因，是大家在互联网中的寄托，且也是大家的文化基因所决定的。毫无疑问，社区中有争吵和异议，但是相似的是：大家都知道这里面的都是某个球队的粉丝，且大家期盼的目标是有价值的。社区中，大家都有归属感，大家都是社区不可或缺的一部分。

　　如果我们关系网模式不断扩张，正如Facebook所推动的，那么用户们将要冲破社交网络的禁锢和局限。如果我们想要创造设计社交产品，那么我们需要赋予产品这样一个价值——他确实能够让人们变得更加Social，真真切切的Social！

　　我们构建的产品不能只满足用户记录和发布的需要，我们需要鼓励大家讨论，共同体验，且构建持续的、有意义的关系链。这些都是能够为用户创造价值的所在，这样的产品才能激励用户。因此，社交网络的未来并不只在于一个关系网，而在于社区。

　　译者后记：

　　人是个矛盾的集合体，人们渴望去关心周围的朋友，于是就会不由自主地关注其他人。可是当人数到达一定的限度时，信息泛滥的现象发生了，我们无法看完所有的信息流。于是我们想分组浏览，我们会刻意花更多的时间去看，我们生怕漏掉任何一点信息以免遭受什么物质或精神上的损失，我们于是累了、倦了。回头看看，我们似乎一无所得！

　　英文原文：TechCrunch：The Social Network Paradox

The Social Network Paradox

Editor’s Note: Nina Khosla is a designer and founder of Teethie, a social blogging startup focused on building interest-based communities. You can follow her @ninakix.

Over the years, there’s been a radical change in the way we interact with our networks of friends online. It used to be that we had a few of our friends (online or offline friends) on a service, allowing us to connect to friends through the Internet and see what their activities were. Where the Internet used to be a somewhat scary world full of strangers, we suddenly had friendly anchors to explore that world with. Sure, most of our friends weren’t online, or at least not using the same services, but the familiarity was comforting and the ability to see what a few of our friends were doing allowed us to find new content and new friends.

We fell in love with sites that made us feel like there are people out there who are similar to us, who we are talking to and having common experiences with. But then, some of these networks — Facebook and Twitter in particular — began to grow explosively. Facebook facilitated a cultural norm of using its service to “friend” everyone we knew. All of a sudden we had tons of our friends everywhere we went. With the experiences gained sharing online spaces with a few friends, logic would dictate that having more of our friends online would make this experience richer. But that isn’t what happened.

Instead, there is a new trend happening: We’re not really paying attention to our friends we’re connected to online. Take Twitter, for example. Twitter used to be a great place for many early adopters to talk tech. It wasn’t so long ago that there were few enough people on Twitter that you could read every single tweet in your stream.

But as the network began to become more dense, and people found more people they knew and liked on Twitter, they began following hundreds of people, and reading all those tweets became impossible. This is such a fact of life that entire companies are based on the premise that you have too many friends on Facebook and Twitter to really pay attention to what they’re saying.

For example, Flipboard, among others, highlights its abilities to share with you the best of your friends’ Twitter and Facebook posts. These companies, and even Facebook’s news feed intelligence, are helping us deal with the disconnect we have with our friends because of our connectedness—they’re sorting through the deluge of information this expanded network created for us.

Therein lies the paradox of the social network that no one wants to admit: as the size of the network increases, our ability to be social decreases.

Like anything else, networks and the information flowing through them follow the laws of supply and demand. As the number of bits, photos and links coming over these networks grew, each of those invisibly began to decrease in worth.

Perhaps that explains the excitement over new products. When a smaller crew of people are using a tool, such as Foursquare, we can keep track of our friends’ locations and whereabouts. At a smaller scale, knowing this information and being able to expect that others have also seen it let us all in on a little secret, it made early use of Twitter feel somewhat magical. But as the number of friends begins to increase—particularly over that magic Dunbar number of 150—the spell begins to wear off. At this scale, we simply can’t easily keep track of it all. When our number of connections rises above 150 everything becomes simply comments, as real conversations tax our already limited ability to interface with the network.

What used to be a small community of web explorers and renegades had turned into nothing more than a large party of somewhat meaningless Foursquare checkins and an excessive use of hashtags. That mythical thing, social connection, doesn’t flow over these networks; information flows over these networks. The only reason the network ever felt meaningful was because, at small scale, the network operated like a community. But that breaks apart at large scale.

Which leads us to communities: Communities, the kind with clearly demarcated lines of membership, have always existed within the context of larger networks, and always broke off in bits and pieces to make them feel familiar. Communities, and the spaces that are given to them to form in, are the only way we are able to work with the network of the physical world. Our soccer team, our school, our workplace, our street, our town, all have their own communities. And I suspect that these are the only things that will make the digital world similarly manageable.

Communities give us an audience and a perspective. We know who we’re talking to. This doesn’t seem like a big thing, but it’s the glue that holds our communication together. It’s the difference between shouting out into the void, and having a conversation with someone standing in front of you.

What’s the difference between live tweeting a sports game or participating in an SB Nation game thread? A tweet is not an experience, it’s the broadcasting of an individuals’ experience to a vague and undefined audience. When I think about the kinds of things I tweet, they’re things like “I just read a cool article, check it out,” or “About to get on a plane,” or “GOALLLL!” if my team (the San Jose Sharks) has just scored.

The thing about all these is that they’re not a shared experience—they are my experiences, which I am sharing with you, but you probably cannot experience with me—my thoughts or fascination with the article I just posted, the feeling of getting on that plane, or the thrill of watching the Sharks tie the game. Perhaps you can compare your notes of your own experience of these things; that’s what most Twitter conversation seems to be, to me, but the experiences are not shared.

This differs from a discussion in a community, such as the type that occurs on SB Nation game day threads. The conversation does not center around any one individual’s experience, but rather the collective condition of the community. The conversation is the experience. Each comment is driven with the purpose of evoking and expressing the emotions that the community experiences, and particularly the ones they hold in common.

This habit of evoking and expressing common emotions is what drives inside jokes and their internet incarnation, memes. Sure, there are disagreements and differences in communities, but the magic is in the similarities: Knowing that everyone on there is also a Sharks fan and just swore at the TV over that goal is emotional and valuable. That’s what expands the sense of belonging and membership that people in a  community feel, and becomes a basis for the entirety of the rest of the discussion (even, especially, differences).

SB Nation is in real-time, but it doesn’t have to be: communities have sprung up for years on traditional, slow PHP bulletin boards. Lost fans populated message boards and blogs, uniting over their common love of Lost, and the way the show antagonized them—what is in that hatch?!

If the pattern of all our networks is to grow larger, as Facebook has pushed others around it to become, consumers will hit these limits on the meaningfulness of these networks. If we are creating social products, we need to create products that do allow people to be social, really social.

We need to build products that don’t just allow users to write and publish, we need to create products that encourage discussion, experiences, and lasting, meaningful relationships. These are the things that create real benefits for users and the products that inspire them. And thus, the future of the social web is no longer on a network, it’s within communities.

Crunchbase

• TEETHIE
• NINA KHOSLA

Teethie is stealth startup currently building a social blogging tool focused on building communities of like-minded individuals.