Last Post!

Best of luck to everyone on their exams!

Everyone's got an opinion.

When I first read the concept of the procrastinaton principle, I thought it was going to be some witty saying like, why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? But I was very interested to see that it wasn't the case. The procrastination princple discussed by Zittrain was simple: problems in media generally get worked out by the users.

This got me thinking. I can't remember the last time I've sought help and acquired my answer from anything but a message board. Instruction manuals are a thing of the past. If I have a question about something -- anything -- I google the question and chances are, there's a Google Answer page for it. Or, I post a question in my status or tweet it, and I get  the responses posted there.

It's very apparent that everyone has an opinion. I think the developments, especially in regards to social networking sites, have encouraged everyone to voice their opinion -- that now, since there is a dedicated forum to expressing yourself, you're expected to do so.

These answers that I seek are not typically to earth-shattering problems. I'm looking for help with something on my car or on a computer program, and the dialogue between users makes it quick to find the best result. This is the case in several other forums, too. Notice now how everything has a star system. You can, and are encouraged, to share your opinion on products, places, people. You can even review reviews -- as most forums end with "Did you find this review helpful?"

It's strange how much faith people have in strangers online. The same world where, if someone asks for money, you run down a list of things that they could do-- steal your wallet, buy drugs, etc. is the world that often seeks out non-expert opinions to solve every day problems. I think the whole thing is very inconsistent.

Networking

Have you gotten a chance to check out the Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook yet?

Basically, it details how Facebook plans to do away with networks, as they've gotten too big. He says, "However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.."

The whole plan seems like a step towards Twitter. Twitter has recently launched the Lists feature which lets you categorize people according to your preferences. I wonder what's going on here. I was under the impression that networks were one of strongest features of social networking sites, but now it appears that is phasing out. This does a number on the ideas that we have learned with searchability and the overall concept of networked publics.

I guess it makes sense that it's phasing out, though. It probably indicates that the usage of the networks is changing. People are no longer using the network search feature to find people near them or with things in common. Maybe people are using the sites to maintain the friendships they already have, with real people, who are in all different networks of their own. People are friends with such diverse groups that networks don't really matter except for being used as just another identification feature. I'll be curious to see where this goes.