*****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org  *****

Nick,

	I have long discussions with the founder of LinkedIn about social
networks.  He does NOT do any social network analysis and as far as I
know, none of the "social networking" sites do.  He is a very nice guy
with a advanced degree in philosophy.

	I don't blame business for the term being usurped.  Lot's of things
have multiple meanings.  I sometimes get frustrated because I have to
reexplain what I mean over and over; but I get frustrated with some in
the social network community as well because I find their interests too
narrow.  For instance, the type of segmentary opposition you mention is
widely discussed in the network literature.

	It is not what I would consider to be network thinking to define groups
by attributes.  It seems to me that once you have labeled a group
"stupid and short sighted" it becomes something it reasonable to safely
ignore.  You would not drill down to find gems like FAS Research, a
business dedicated to using network analysis to help the world function
better and much loved contributors to INSNA.

	If you think about it, you have answered your own questions.

-Don

	
> *****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org  *****
> 
> On 10/7/06, Moses Boudourides <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> *****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org  *****
>>
>> I'm just wondering: is this a mere naiveté or why do people around
>> business tend to  identify social networks with gimmicks like MySpace?
>> What do they see that sociologists cannot understand?  Your cues will
>> be appreciated.
>>
>> --Moses
>>
>> [snip long articles]
> 
> What sickens me is that the focus of these business-perspective
> articles is how these sites are a new way to make money by profiling
> users or using network effects. This perspective can never work! It is
> precisely this perspective of exploitation that people naturally
> resist, and the very same network effects will quickly clamp down on
> any such perceived threat. Perhaps it will create success in some
> early cases when it's still cool, like alternate-reality-games which
> are just now getting to be recognized the critical amount of people
> who will make it not novel enough to work anymore, but that doesn't
> work in general. Stupid, short-sighted business people.
> (p.s.: something like Snakes on a Plane will always work because the
> reason it was popular was because the intanetz caught on to the silly
> title and soon after the fact that the creators were going to deliver
> exactly what was expected from the title, and especially that Samuel L
> Jackson was "cool" and accepted as a sort of honourary member of the
> intanetz, if that makes any sort of sense at all)
> 
> I think that perhaps if business people associate
> MySpace=={blogs+music+video+shiny icons+customization+profiles}==$$
> it's because all they read are stupid uninformed articles like these.
> But I don't know enough business people personally to say if that's
> true or not.
> 
> Here's a sociological question for someone to study, then: what's the
> difference in attitude between {business,math,arts,nonacademic}-types,
> and why?
> 
> 
> -Nick
> 
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