Social > Meaning.
That’s what Stan states in this excellent post. Stan’s one of the reallysmartguys that I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know recently. When he talks (writes) I listen (read).
In summary he concludes that “who said something is infinitely more interesting than what has been said.”
I agree with the conclusion though he doesn’t push the thought far enough.
Stan’s ends at “social/trust relations trump others” and includes a mention of the food-fight application in Facebook where meaningless bytes shared between friends has scaled across the network. The application validates the importance of social/trust relations and serves to highlight the limitation that comes when meaning is absent.
Extend the thought within the Facebook example: Beacon is interesting because the bytes shared between friends are no longer bits of food, rather they’re bits representing interests. Having a friend toss me a movie she recently rented is infinitely more interesting than a pie in the face. The problem remains that in the absence of meaning the two are the same - simple bits and bytes that need to be interpreted and filtered.
Push this thought further. Obviously I find information from Alex more valuable than information originating from an unknown. But without meaning all information I receive from Alex is treated equally. While I like Alex’s books I may disagree with his taste in wine.
Therefore social/trust relations across subject matter is infinitely more interesting than social/trust relations, which in turn is more interesting than meaning.
This leads us to: Social + Meaning >> Social > Meaning
To go full circle, and return to Stan, he discusses how the company he founded, Lijit, is surfacing social/trust relations in search. That’s interesting but the real value comes when they layer meaning onto the results. This happens implicitly when you search for a specific term and explicitly as they classify individuals as “experts” across certain subjects. For example, finding a trusted source for information on “venture capital term sheets” is valuable; however, finding a trusted expert on that topic (i.e. this returned page) is much more valuable.
What’s promising in all of this is that the social piece is slowly becoming ubiquitous. The ubiquity is resulting in the emergence of infrastructure. And the infrastructure can be innovated on top of. Innovation is moving towards Social + Meaning. And that’s a great thing.
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I was browsing Karen’s movie picks on Netflix, and I was stricken by how engaging and interesting this was. We liked a lot of the same movies and so other things that she liked were intriguingly to me. To put it simply: Sort( Karen’s movies by rating ) - Alex’s movies has a huge value to me.
It’s interesting bc I was just having a conversation about this the other day with some people the other day. The need for the creation of ‘edge experts’ for the collective (based on a system, the community ascribes social + meaning that Alex is an expert in Semantic Web and therefore we can filter and look to his meaning on that particular subject) as well as the need to have that for the individual (I don’t wish to use the communities view but rather my own view of social + meaning bc I want to include my friend Dave as an equal to Alex even though the community may not know or feel the same way about Dave)…..
Leigh,
I finally returned to try to make sense of your comment (I’ve either had too much eggnog since the 22nd or you had too much eggnog on the 22nd ;)) and post a follow-up.
You’re saying that increasingly there will be the need for us to define our own edge experts who provide equally valuable input in decisions around certain topics as community defined experts? i.e. Alex is defined as an edge expert by the community but you want input from Dave to be equally weighted (because you have defined his expertise as high, and valuable due to social connection)?
Help me Obi-won.
That is exactly what I was saying. Most applications build to the largest view (the community) and create the network value. What I want is a balance between that larger network knowledge and my own ability to customize/shape/inform it with my own.
…And that’s Princess Leah (but without the ugly side hair pom poms)
Makes total sense to me. Why no service delivers network benefit organized by tiers of importance (constructed both implicitly and explicitly) is beyond me.
I know you. I trust your recommendation in X (but not in Y, sorry). So why can’t I have granular control to adjust the weights of X and Y relative to the community?
Well then I guess it musta been your nog that was the problem. :) Happy New Year!