Social Networking Getting Another Facelift? Ask Google and See Socialstream

The online magazine, Social Computing, had this interesting little report about how The Google Empire is supporting a project to 'Rethink and Reinvent Social Networking'

The initial mission was to help improve the online community orkut, but the project's scope was not to simply redesign the interface. The team at Carnegie Mellon considered how online social networking could bring greater value to users, especially for ages above twenty.

After initial brainstorming and research, the team - comprising three designers, four computer scientists, two mathematicians, a social scientist, a businesswoman, and a pair of philosophers - chose to focus on the effects of a new model for online social networking: a unified social network that, as a service, provides social data to many other applications.

Their user research examined needs related to online as well as offline social networking and considered how they related to a unified social network service model. Through this user research they identified a set of archetypes that represent common behavior patterns that existed across multiple study participants and also formulated a summarized list of their high level needs.

The solution the team came up with, Socialstream, is "a system where users can seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks."

It is the result of a rigorous user-centered design process that involved formal research and evaluation with over 35 participants and weekly critiques from clients and colleagues.

Nice to see this type of research that focuses on a non-Millenial demo. One of the items that we here at Two Way believe is that social computing is only going to work if everyone can work it. Simply put, you can't reap the greatest benefits of the social network without the entire set of social possibilities. Digital natives are, of course, important. But so is the 45 year old down the street who has never though about Facebook or Myspace. We'll see what comes of this.

What Google's research is baring is Socialstream. In this cas you would get a social site aggregator that, much like blogs and webpages are RSSed, this would do much the same. If you have two or three profiles on separate sites, this allows you to keep all of them while accessing their content on one page. It will be interesting to see how this really works. But for me the most important item read in their study was the Literature Review (I am such an academic!).

In addition to general reading on social networking, we explored the Pew and HomeNet Projects, a series of studies of Internet usage in the home. Some important trends include:

* Gender: Men prefer entertainment while women prefer to focus on connections.
* Age: Older users want something productive while younger users want something social.
* Strength of Online Relationships: The Internet supports acquaintance relationships much better than close friendships.

Social Networking Theory
Based on readings and seminar discussions from a social networking class, several important theories emerged:

* Similarity and interests become more important online than physical proximity
* Social network usage is contagious. People join on a single suggestion, but require more motivation to continue use.
* The connections listed in any single online service are incomplete.
* Simple connections do not mirror the complex nature of real relationships.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Socialstream, Carnegie Mellon, Google

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