September 30, 2011 at 13:12Interest graph: a new principle of networking
A couple of months ago I was very touched by the publication of The Ideal Social Network . The author of this publication, arilou-campe , outlined the dominant principles by which most of the social interaction in the modern network is built, and then he tried to guess what principles this interaction will be built in the near future.
I want to continue and clarify his thought, to voice several important and fruitful, in my opinion, concepts (the “graph of interests” is one of them) around which a discussion is being held today about the future development of the network, and also give as an example several projects ( over one of which I myself am working now), already implementing in practice the new principles of social interaction: the very principles that may become dominant in the very near future.
So, the modern dominant principle of interaction in the network is the principle of “social network”. Services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, LiveJournal and many others embody this principle. Interaction in "social networks" involves the implementation of two important practices:
In social networks, I get new information from that circle of people with whom I have fixed some kind of connection. These connections can be called in different ways: contacts, friends, acquaintances, readers, subscribers. Connections can be two-way (if I read you, then you must read me), and can be one-way (if I read you, you do not have to read me).
But despite all these visible differences, everywhere we observe the same picture. Most of the connections in the social network are recorded with those people whom I learned outside the network, with whom I established these connections without the mediation of the service itself. Moreover, once the fixed connections persist for a long time and change little with time. It can be my friends, classmates, colleagues, celebrities. The social network allows me to repeat the structure of my connections that already exist, and so apart from it, it transfers my social graph to the virtual space.
The advantages of such a system seem at first glance quite obvious. The social network allows you to maintain and strengthen existing connections, as well as constantly being aware of what excites those people whom I know or who are curious to me. Another social network allows you to probably keep in touch with a much larger number of people than was possible without it, and increase the magic number of Dunbar , equal to 150 contacts.
Map the social graph personal user Facebook (created by the application http://apps.facebook.com/socgraph/ )
However, in real life, if I aspire to gain new experience or new knowledge, I will most likely turn to new people, I will seek new connections. And the social network does not provide me with any serious tools for finding such people and for creating connections with them. I am closed in my social graph, and in order to change it, I must go beyond the boundaries of the social network and create new connections myself, without its help.
Moreover, these new connections are formed with different people for a variety of reasons. As a rule, behind a new connection lies a jointly experienced concrete experience, some specific joint practice. But fixing a new connection in the social network and starting to receive information from my new contact, I am not connecting to our joint practice, but to the whole person as a whole, to his whole life. Which may not interest me at all.
Moreover, if something really interests me, I will look for information of my interest, regardless of whether I get it from a person I know or from a stranger. And if I'm interested in something new, it will most likely turn out so that none of my friends have ever been interested in this and is unlikely to be able to help me. And if I only know roughly what I would like, but I can’t precisely formulate this? How to make sure that the information I need comes to me myself, and from those people whom I don’t even know yet: so that I can discover it (discover), and not find it (search)?
How should a network be organized in order to overcome all those problems that a social network cannot overcome? What interaction principle should be the basis of this new network?
As I see it, such a new network should be able to provide its users with the opportunity to implement two main practices:
Illustration of the "graph of interests". The picture is taken from http://blog.fantoon.com/2011/07/24/interest-graph/
Recently, various projects have begun to meet, one way or another implementing the new principle of interaction on the network - not through the social connection of users, but through community their interests.
The pioneer of the practical and consistent implementation of the concept of “graph of interests” can certainly be considered the English-language project Quoraopened to the general public in June 2010. Behind the external facade of the question and answer service lies a system of user interaction through common interests. In this service, interests are called topics. Each Quora member describes his or her interests by subscribing (follow) on one or another topic. Each published question is also tied to the topics to which it relates. And if the topics indicated by the user coincide with the topics of the question, then the user sees this question in his feed (feed). Those. information is transmitted not through channels of social connections, but through channels of communication with the same interests .
Unfortunately, the narrow sharpening of this wonderful service on the functionality of questions and answers limits the area of user interaction to the virtual space of multimedia messages. It seems that Quora has no prospect to provide its users with joint experience of practical joint activities outside the network.
And I myself am currently working on a project called HappLink. He has not yet left the beta testing stage - a lot of things still need to be fixed and put in order. But be that as it may, we are trying in this project to consistently implement the principle of user interaction precisely through their interests. In HappLink, each user also describes himself by indicating his interests. And in the same way, each publication is tied to certain interests, which allows you to receive in your feed the information that corresponds to your interests.
But what's important, HappLink aims to provide its users with the ability to interact, including outside the network.. Here you can not only share virtual multimedia information, but also organize joint activities by talking about your “intention” or organizing an “event”. An intention and an event is tied not only to interests, but also to a specific place.
The main challenge that the graph of intereststhose developers who undertake to put it into practice - it is a need to create such filtering tools that would allow you to customize the flow of information as closely as possible corresponding to your current interests. We must be able to provide the user with the opportunity at any time to receive only that information that corresponds to his current, quickly and easily changeable map of interests, with which he describes himself. The map of social relations is difficult to transform and slowly changes over time. The affinity map must overcome this significant limitation.
I want to continue and clarify his thought, to voice several important and fruitful, in my opinion, concepts (the “graph of interests” is one of them) around which a discussion is being held today about the future development of the network, and also give as an example several projects ( over one of which I myself am working now), already implementing in practice the new principles of social interaction: the very principles that may become dominant in the very near future.
Social graph
So, the modern dominant principle of interaction in the network is the principle of “social network”. Services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, LiveJournal and many others embody this principle. Interaction in "social networks" involves the implementation of two important practices:
- I interact mainly with those people with whom I have fixed my connection, receiving attention from them, which confirms and strengthens our connection.
Such a system, in which the key elements are people and the connections between them, is called a social graph . In abstraction, a social graph looks like a set of nodes that denote people, and lines between nodes that denote existing relationships between people.
The concept of a social graph has been actively used to comprehend the modern network since May 2007, after it was voiced at the first Facebook F8 conference . - I regularly review the latest information from people with whom I have registered contacts (I am not looking for new information - new information comes to me myself).
Such a method is called the detection information ( discovery ) and contrasted search ( search ).
In social networks, I get new information from that circle of people with whom I have fixed some kind of connection. These connections can be called in different ways: contacts, friends, acquaintances, readers, subscribers. Connections can be two-way (if I read you, then you must read me), and can be one-way (if I read you, you do not have to read me).
But despite all these visible differences, everywhere we observe the same picture. Most of the connections in the social network are recorded with those people whom I learned outside the network, with whom I established these connections without the mediation of the service itself. Moreover, once the fixed connections persist for a long time and change little with time. It can be my friends, classmates, colleagues, celebrities. The social network allows me to repeat the structure of my connections that already exist, and so apart from it, it transfers my social graph to the virtual space.
The advantages of such a system seem at first glance quite obvious. The social network allows you to maintain and strengthen existing connections, as well as constantly being aware of what excites those people whom I know or who are curious to me. Another social network allows you to probably keep in touch with a much larger number of people than was possible without it, and increase the magic number of Dunbar , equal to 150 contacts.
Map the social graph personal user Facebook (created by the application http://apps.facebook.com/socgraph/ )
However, in real life, if I aspire to gain new experience or new knowledge, I will most likely turn to new people, I will seek new connections. And the social network does not provide me with any serious tools for finding such people and for creating connections with them. I am closed in my social graph, and in order to change it, I must go beyond the boundaries of the social network and create new connections myself, without its help.
Moreover, these new connections are formed with different people for a variety of reasons. As a rule, behind a new connection lies a jointly experienced concrete experience, some specific joint practice. But fixing a new connection in the social network and starting to receive information from my new contact, I am not connecting to our joint practice, but to the whole person as a whole, to his whole life. Which may not interest me at all.
Moreover, if something really interests me, I will look for information of my interest, regardless of whether I get it from a person I know or from a stranger. And if I'm interested in something new, it will most likely turn out so that none of my friends have ever been interested in this and is unlikely to be able to help me. And if I only know roughly what I would like, but I can’t precisely formulate this? How to make sure that the information I need comes to me myself, and from those people whom I don’t even know yet: so that I can discover it (discover), and not find it (search)?
Graph of interest
How should a network be organized in order to overcome all those problems that a social network cannot overcome? What interaction principle should be the basis of this new network?
As I see it, such a new network should be able to provide its users with the opportunity to implement two main practices:
- I interact mainly with those people who share my interests, receiving recognition from them and establishing new connections. Moreover, I interact not only virtually, communicating on the network, but also realistically, together experiencing a new experience.
In recent years, discussions on the network - as opposed to the concept of "social graph" - arose the concept of "interest graph" ( Interest graph ). The interest graph describes a system consisting of people, interests, and relationships between. And if in the social graph there is only one type of “man-man” relationship, then in the graph of interests of these types of relationships are three: “man-man”, “man-interest”, “interest-interest”.
In fact, the graph of interests creates an additional new dimension and in abstraction looks like a social graph lying on a plane over which the third dimension is built in the form of nodes of interest. In the graph of interests, people have a new opportunity - to communicate with each other through common interests. In such a system, the establishment of social ties can occur after the establishment of ties through interests.
The concept of the graph of interests was first announced in the Gravity project in March 2009. - I regularly review the latest information from people who share my interests (I am not looking for new information - new information comes to me, in accordance with my interests).
Illustration of the "graph of interests". The picture is taken from http://blog.fantoon.com/2011/07/24/interest-graph/
Recently, various projects have begun to meet, one way or another implementing the new principle of interaction on the network - not through the social connection of users, but through community their interests.
The pioneer of the practical and consistent implementation of the concept of “graph of interests” can certainly be considered the English-language project Quoraopened to the general public in June 2010. Behind the external facade of the question and answer service lies a system of user interaction through common interests. In this service, interests are called topics. Each Quora member describes his or her interests by subscribing (follow) on one or another topic. Each published question is also tied to the topics to which it relates. And if the topics indicated by the user coincide with the topics of the question, then the user sees this question in his feed (feed). Those. information is transmitted not through channels of social connections, but through channels of communication with the same interests .
Unfortunately, the narrow sharpening of this wonderful service on the functionality of questions and answers limits the area of user interaction to the virtual space of multimedia messages. It seems that Quora has no prospect to provide its users with joint experience of practical joint activities outside the network.
And I myself am currently working on a project called HappLink. He has not yet left the beta testing stage - a lot of things still need to be fixed and put in order. But be that as it may, we are trying in this project to consistently implement the principle of user interaction precisely through their interests. In HappLink, each user also describes himself by indicating his interests. And in the same way, each publication is tied to certain interests, which allows you to receive in your feed the information that corresponds to your interests.
But what's important, HappLink aims to provide its users with the ability to interact, including outside the network.. Here you can not only share virtual multimedia information, but also organize joint activities by talking about your “intention” or organizing an “event”. An intention and an event is tied not only to interests, but also to a specific place.
The main challenge that the graph of intereststhose developers who undertake to put it into practice - it is a need to create such filtering tools that would allow you to customize the flow of information as closely as possible corresponding to your current interests. We must be able to provide the user with the opportunity at any time to receive only that information that corresponds to his current, quickly and easily changeable map of interests, with which he describes himself. The map of social relations is difficult to transform and slowly changes over time. The affinity map must overcome this significant limitation.