The idea of specialization in networks has been manifesting itself with growing regularity and in multiple locations. Just the other day a columnist on TechCrunch questioned whether a service like Quora can be truly for the masses, or whether it is fated to remain of special status as a club of garrulous techies and other web aficionados essentially conversing with each other. Perhaps this is going too far, but the idea is anyway not about insularity as much as it is about niche. It is about a unique value proposition in a vast web community with multiple facets.
The subject occurred in a different manifestation on the A VC blog a few weeks ago, in a post about the existence of multiple social graphs. Among other subjects of that article was the inclination of those within the social web to use different networks, different services, for different reasons. LinkedIn, for example, professionally; Twitter to collect information; Facebook to connect with friends online; Foursquare to connect with friends in person. There, once again, the principle was implicitly challenged, that one network (even Facebook) can adequately cover all of our social bases; and the notion of necessary niches was thus again put forth.
In both of these instances – arguing the case for network specialization – one comes away wondering why the reality of networks, (agreeing as I do with the respective authors), is that way. Why do we gravitate to one social interaction for one purpose and to another for another? Functionality plays a big role, no doubt: For example, Twitter is a clunky picture sharing service while Facebook is much more effective. But this is not always an accurate segmentation of circumstance, and oftentimes characteristics overlap: Tweets and updates are not very different, and if one really wished it one could create a personal LinkedIn profile to exceed professional limitations. By the same token, discussion topics are found on LinkedIn in ways not dissimilar to questions on Quora; and people can be followed on Quora just as they can be on other networks.
I realize that there are differences of nuance in each of the examples cited, but I question to what extent such differences are the cause or the effect of our custom. Why don’t we use LinkedIn updates interchangeably with tweets? Well, in fact, many do, and truth be told, it’s annoying. I have no problem scrolling past endless drivel on Twitter, but I shouldn’t have to do so on LinkedIn. It is a personal quirk, maybe, but maybe it also speaks to how we become conditioned, and how our expectations are established.
With such reflections I begin to think that there is more arbitrariness to the way social networks emerge than we realize, and that the rigid functionalities of our social networks are formed at the very origin of these. We use Facebook the way we do because we always have; we use Twitter the way we always will; we ask certain questions on Quora rather than LinkedIn because it is expected. These are all habits that have been formed, and that will not be altered. Any new use, any new social graph, will thus require a new network.
