Michael Voong HCI Researcher @ Birmingham University

Online Social Webs: A Waste of Time?

My friend recently sent me a link to a really interesting article which pretty much summed up a lot of what I’ve been thinking about recently regarding the real nature of online social networks:

Link: Facing the Faceless

In summary, the article says that people are increasingly using online social networks as an excuse for avoiding F2F (face-to-face) contact. Even though these systems can provide us with a much easier way to connect to our friends, it seems like we are creating less and less strong relationships with them. What are your thoughts?

The link seems to be broken

Sorry, fixed it now

Spot on. Tending a virtual social network is no substitute for the practice of F2F interaction. But then you could say the same thing about the telephone. The role of a virtual social network should be to augment your real one, enabling you to maintain it much more effectively with wider reach and better communication. I’d like to see someone decompose how the virtual social networks do the work of this. At the moment it’s a mish-mash of linked profiles, photo albums and blogging.

You might be interested in the “opinion” section of the 16th of Sept New Scientist - it has a section called “the Cult of us’ which is all about online communities.

Thank you!