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The Two Types Of Social Network

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The ones that trap you, and the ones that set you free. But neither one is the future.

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Via: Robert Galbraith / Reuters

There are more social networks than ever, and more people using them. The sheer variety in social networking, though, has left us with an increasingly narrow definition of what a social network is. Perhaps the only one that applies to all of them, from Twitter to Facebook to Snapchat, is this: a social network is a communications service based on your identity.

It follows, then, that a social network’s ability to affect your identity should be considered its most important trait — and that therefore there are two types of social network:

1) Those that simulate social mobility
2) Those that don't

Mobility provides a handy lens through which to judge the networks we use every day — and to understand why we like, or don't like, using them. It also brings them into one of the internet's longest running and most important conversations, from which they've been oddly absent: is the internet a place for opportunity, or a place for reproduction of existing social orders?

Another way to describe this distinction might be to say that some social networks are aspirational, while some replicate what already exists in your life. Some give you a way to become something your aren't, or, more accurately, to alter how people see you, while others, over time, insist on creating a more accurate portrait of who you are.

Twitter is one of the largest, and purest, aspirational social networks. This is built into the site's “Follow”-centric vocabulary. Twitter is a place where you have followers, not friends; a place where following fewer people than follow you is a sign of status; a place where the verification of your real identity is really an acknowledgment that you've become something other than yourself — something better, in Twitter's abstracted terms. Fleeting interaction with celebrities and the powerful fuels users' hopes, giving them the sense, at least, of a level playing field. And while social mobility on Twitter may be overemphasized (it's telling that it's usually defined in terms of celebrity), its algorithms — the closest thing it has to a societal framework — aren't much of a mystery. Famous people in real life are famous on Twitter. You see tweets from people you follow, and people they want to introduce you to. Regular people who post and share tweets people like accrue Twitter fame.

Facebook, the first major social network to require real identities, sits at the other end of the spectrum. If Twitter is the place you go to remake yourself (albeit in a way that very likely will be contained entirely within Twitter), Facebook is the place that won't stop reminding you of who you really are (or were). In a post this week, Cliff Watson wrote of his experience on Facebook:

What is Facebook to most people over the age of 25? It's a never-ending class reunion mixed with an eternal late-night dorm room gossip session mixed with a nightly check-in on what coworkers are doing after leaving the office. In other words, it's a place where you go to keep tabs on your friends and acquaintances.

You know what kids call that? School.

Facebook, to users who joined years ago, can even feel like an engine of downward mobility — at best, visiting is a metaphorical trip home to “the block,” where you try to find ways of explaining what your life is like, how it's changed, and how it's gotten better, or how it's gotten worse, without sounding like a jerk, or pathetic, or like you're talking too much about yourself. It's appropriate that, in the year since going public, Facebook has been reminded repeatedly by its new context — the public market — of its own inescapable identity as an ad platform. Its recent experiments in self-expression have been fraught.

Facebook's lack of mobility is sewn into the fabric of the site. Connections for users are symmetrical — a crude digital equivalent to establishing a relationship or an acquaintanceship in real life. If it feels like a popularity contest, it's only in an antiquated sense; it encourages none of the self-as-a-minor-celebrity illusions that Twitter does.

But the overall effect, despite (or because of) its realism, can be grim. Facebook is a place where posts, not people, find mobility. If something you do gets noticed, you get little in the way of lasting benefit — it's a place where users share content, and content doesn't share back. Facebook is a place where brands, not users, can become famous. On Facebook, “followers” are for people who have them in real life.

The other large social networks fall into these categories, too. Tumblr, a space that values performance over all else, and which lets people be both successful and unrecognizable, is an aspirational network, a place where you're encouraged to be who you want to be rather than who you are. Google Plus's ultimate goal, like Facebook's, is to progressively recreate your real-world identity online — it's just starting with a different (private, and arguably therefore more relevant) set of data. LinkedIn is an aspirational service wrapped in realist mechanics. In a much more significant way than Twitter, it's a place that promises to make you into someone else. When that doesn't pan out, the mechanics overwhelm the experience. An impotent LinkedIn profile is the most depressing real estate on social media.

In the context of near-constant Facebook doomsaying, the future may seem to favor upwardly mobile networks. But in reality, it may favor neither. As Watson claims in his piece, the next generation of social networks — message-heavy services like Snapchat, Kik and Whatsapp — are more “social” and less “network” than what came before. They have no outwardly visible social structures and little in the way of profiles. Twitter brought texting to the public internet; these services are taking it back off.

While they don’t fit most pundits' ideas of what a social network is, they fit our stripped-down, broad one: they are services based, in a simple way, on identity. Instead, though, they manifest users' identities not as public profiles, but as private handles — a refreshing throwback that also happens to preclude most discussion of discrete mobililty (these services join in on real life more than they mirror it; they create hidden parallel channels rather than online simulacra).

They have less in common with Facebook and Twitter than they do with the social network I've used longer than any other: AIM.

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Virgin Mobile adds $40 payLo unlimited plan for talk and text types

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Author: Gabe Hall

Virgin Mobile’s feature phone arm just added a third tier, delivering unlimited talk and texting, along with 50 megs of web access for $ 40 per month. This offering joins Sprint’s other payLo budget offerings, including an entry-level option that includes 400 minutes of talk time for $ 20 per month, and a $ 30 monthly plan that delivers 1,500 minutes, 1,500 texts and 30MB of data. Overage charges are quite hefty, at $ 0.10 per minute, $ 0.25 per message and $ 1.50 per MB (ouch!), with the option to reset the counter instead by starting a new month once you hit the threshold. Considering that the plans are designed for feature phones (which are seldom used for anything but basic web access), the tier limits do sound manageable — perhaps even a deal, if you talk a lot and never browse the web. The payLo plan can be paired with any of Virgin’s feature phones, which range in price from $ 15 (for a sold-out LG101) to $ 50 (for a QWERTY-equipped Kyocera S2300). Get the full scoop from Sprint in the PR after the break.

Continue reading Virgin Mobile adds $ 40 payLo unlimited plan for talk and text types

Virgin Mobile adds $ 40 payLo unlimited plan for talk and text types originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 May 2012 22:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung shuns point-and-shoot cameras, switches factory to pricier mirrorless types

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Samsung’s main camera plant in China is being converted to produce high-end mirrorless cameras instead of cheaper compacts. That’s a steel-and-concrete sign that the manufacturer is trying to boost digital imaging profits by focusing on cameras with higher margins, and it implies a level adaptability that other companies can only dream of. Sammy’s latest NX range of interchangeable-lens (ILC) mirrorless models start at around $ 700, which is at least twice the going rate for a decent point-and-shoot. While that higher price point may seem off-putting, demand for mirrorless cameras is actually expected to explode by 60 percent this year, according to IDC projections — while sales of compacts are retreating in the face of ever more powerful smartphone snappers. Ultimately, Samsung’s business plan could be good news for us end-users too, if a newly expanded NX range brings the entry point for ILCs down by $ 200 or so — although that could just be wishful thinking on our part.

Samsung shuns point-and-shoot cameras, switches factory to pricier mirrorless types originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 08:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Epson has 3 types of robots, Scara, Cartesian, & 6 axis

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Author: Markus Smith

3 robots sharing on PC & one point file doing continuous motion. Controller is PC runing Windows XP. All robots have motion card in passive backplane of a PC
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Artificial tongue distinguishes 18 different types of canned tomato

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Author: Matthew Wilson

Taste tests are fun — unless you’re in Italy, in which case they’re drawn-out and rancorous. That’s why scientists in Milan are trying to remove humans from the equation, by using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to reveal objective “metabolomic fingerprints” for different foodstuffs instead. In their latest experiment, NMR succeeded in predicting how human testers would judge 18 different canned tomato products, including sensory descriptors such as bitterness, saltiness, “redness” and density. Like Caesar always said, technology that knows a good ragu is technology we can trust.

Artificial tongue distinguishes 18 different types of canned tomato originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Asus debuts Series B notebooks for business types

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Author: Alexander McQueen

Asus has announced a new line of notebook computers that are aimed at the business user. The machines have some of the same features like matte finish LCDs and Boston Power Sonata batteries.

Those batteries claim a longer usable life than many other batteries on the market. The B series has the B53J, B53F, B43J, and B43F. The 53 models have 15.6-inch screens and the 43 units are 14.1-inch notebooks.

The 53J and 43J have Intel Core i5-520M or i7-620M options, a ATI 5470 GPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 320GB 7200 rpm HDD. The 53F and 43F models have Intel Core i5-520M CPUs, Intel GMA graphics, 2GB of RAM, and 320GB 5400 rpm HDDs.

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