There is a very sad film about the "high spheres" life in New York. It is about the politics, the games people play, the artificial and the indifference. It is very sad - but so true. It is so sad because of the contrast between our imaginations based on the artificial glitter and the exalted words and the true life. And it is important because it reminds us how much of our social communication is just conventions and games.
We should remember this when designing social applications and not call the people one know as his friends.
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That Doctorow article is great. Obviously what Danah Boyd has been saying too.
The best hope for YASNS is to start to give us more control over the "friendship" link. More types, the ability for users or applications to define their own types, the ability for us to control what gets shown via what types of links, and what applications can post on each.
That's one of the reasons I thought the circle of trust and circle of friendship applications looked interesting. They may be taking us in this direction.
OTOH it may be too little, too late. And simply too hard to fit into our current understanding of Facebook. Cory's logic of YASN collapse sounds very plausible.
I haven't seen the film, but I'm not sure that it's sad that we're eternally optimistic and hoping for more excitement, glamour, romance from our social lives. Better that than a pessimistic "realism" that hopes for, and strives for, nothing.
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