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April 19, 2005

F=UC²

In the play (and movie) Six Degrees of Separation, Ouisa Kittredge’s famous quote explains its theme and purpose. She says, “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. Everyone is a new door opening into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. But, to find the right six people...”

The story is about a rich New York couple who are visited one night by a man claiming to be a friend of their son’s from Harvard. Strangeness ensues.

Every “social networking” site is based upon this simple concept – that we are all connected by only six degrees of separation. It’s me to you to him to her to Kevin Bacon to the President of the United States. These sites generally allow you to visualize your “network” of friends and friends of friends. The purpose is to effect some sort of value from codifying this elaborate network of yours. And that’s the problem – that “some sort of value” is not generally understood.

6 is a Big Number
I have one problem with most social networking tools: They generally don’t do anything. Seeing the famous formula “E=MC²” written on a chalkboard does not make the theory of relativity any more useful to me. What I mean is if it is an axiomatic truth that we are all separated by six degrees, then why do I need to model it? I mean really, what value does that provide me if we all believe that we are each six phone calls away from the President of the United States anyway? Let’s say I use Friendster to model my network and on my sixth degree of separation I find George Dubya Bush. Would I call him? That’s ridiculous, right? But isn’t that exactly what these sites want us to do so they can take credit for making the connection? It is, and someone better start doing it, or this social networking thing is going to flame out fast. What if he were on my second degree? Surely that is much closer. Would I call him then? To ask for a favor or to introduce me to one of his daughters? No. In fact, I’m not sure how it happened but it turns out I am a ‘friend’ in the first degree of John Kerry. Now he’s only a senator, but still, I wouldn’t think to call him. (I am also three degrees away from General Zod, but jIH ta' ghobe' Sov Klingon, so I can’t call him anyway.)

In fact, I have seen no feel-good stories nor heard any anecdotal evidence from anyone I know that has signed up for a social networking site to the effect that they “…signed up for (insert social networking site here) and ohmigodwouldyoubelieve I met (person they didn’t know they knew) and now he/she is my friend/boss/lover/activity partner.”

Utility is Key
The issue here is that there is a reason our friends are our friends. Our friendships, at their core, are based on utility. We go from being total strangers to having some sort of relationship because we get something for each other, plain and simple. At work, we separate our “coworkers” from “work friends” based on how closely we have worked together, late nights finishing a deal or that time we were all in Vegas for the trade show and later that night Jenkins got up on the table and, well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but that Jenkins is okay in my book. Even if they aren’t our friends, we can connect with total strangers if we have a presumed commonality from which we may derive some value, however scant that value may be. My business partner was in a fraternity in college. He tells me that whenever he wants to stay at one of his fraternity’s houses, he can. This is based on the simple fact that he was in the same fraternity in college. If he meets someone in a bar who happens to mention they were in the same fraternity at some point in time, they are instantly buying each other drinks and talking about their college days even though they weren’t there together. There is a glue that binds us together based on experience and emotion that simply cannot be modeled. And if it cannot be modeled, it cannot be exploited.

Or perhaps it can. Similarly to Einstein’s theory of relativity, my new equation defines friendship. F=UC². F denotes Friendship, U is Utility and I kept the factor C², the square of the velocity of light, the same as in Einstein’s formula. So Utility can be turned into Friendship at the speed of light. (Or something like that – I went to a state school and our science requirements were possibly lower than at your school.)

Don’t believe me? Let’s say General Zod was giving away $100 bills. Would you be his friend then? Would you click on the link that makes you his friend? Of course you would. I’d do whatever internet version of socializing is required to get my $100. That’s Utility. This happens all the time on Monster.com. Strangers connect to form a deeper relationship, in this case in the form of an employment agreement.

In fact, the networking services that connect people for a purpose (Monster.com, Match.com) make a ton of money whereas “social networking” services that simply allow you to model your network and let you decide on the purpose don’t appear to have a viable source of income at the moment. Monster.com and Match.com are Media Networking sites, not social networking sites. That’s right – your profile on Match.com is Media. It is user-generated content that you produce for a specific purpose, namely to Network with others through the Media they create. Match.com is an LMNO. And Match.com Mobile is a better LMNO. The reason Match.com makes hundreds of millions of dollars and Friendster has no detectable source of revenue and is declining in usage is because Match.com provides utility, whereas Friendster doesn’t. (BTW, I think Friendster is starting to figure this out – they have blogging now.)

So, the way I see it, there are two ways to evolve social networking as conceived of today to make it actually useful: 1) Connect me to people I DON’T know. I already know who my friends are, but if you can introduce me to people for a reason, like getting a job or finding a date, then I’m in. The trouble is that there are already well-established companies doing this and it is unclear whether the social networking sites can evolve enough to do this well. 2) If you don’t want to provide me utility as the nexus to create friendships, at least provide a particular purpose for us all to get together. Let’s get our friends together to decode the human genome puzzle or search for extraterrestrial life. Give us a reason to use all of our friends and friends of friends for some productive purpose that creates something that we can all then benefit from. At the very least, give us something to transact.

Bottom line: There is more value in providing purpose between strangers than no purpose between friends. People want to meet people they don’t know and have proven they will pay for it if there is some utility in it. This is the cornerstone of Media Networking.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at April 19, 2005 09:54 AM

Comments

Posted by: James Salmon at April 25, 2005 06:39 AM