Teach42

About a week ago, I found this post by Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why Social Software Makes for Poor Recommendations. He brings up some very interesting points about the ’social’ aspect of social software.

The problem with social software as a recommendation network has its roots in the problem of social software itself. “Friend” is a pretty blunt instrument when it comes to describing relationships, especially in matters of taste. The sad reality is that most of my friends have rotten taste in music (I don’t hold it against them), while the music recommendations I actually follow are mostly from people I’ve never met, be they Rhapsody editors or MP3 blogs. Same for virtually every other narrow category where I need advice; odds are that the real subject matter experts aren’t anyone I know.

In other words, the assumption that there’s a correlation between the people I like and the products I like is a flawed one. To use an analogy, Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, famously uttered this truism (now known as Joy’s Law): “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” The same might be said of recommendations. No matter who you are, someone you don’t know has found the coolest stuff.

He makes a good point. The reality is, very few of my friends have the same interests as me. The people I know that are into technology could care less about education. Those that are into education, may be interested in technology but not at the level I tend to delve in. And to be perfectly honest, most of the people I hang out with aren’t all that interested in education or technology. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I have very little in common with many of my friends! Go figure, eh?

However, here’s where my opinions branch off from his. Social software (along the lines of del.icio.us and Furl) tends to match people up with others that they more than likely have not met before, and it’s entirely possible that they may never meet! However, people are able to use these connections to achieve common purposes with or without the knowledge of the other party. “No matter who you are, someone you don’t know has found the coolest stuff.” How true is that? However, social software puts me in touch with those people who have “found the coolest stuff.” And that’s the key in my opinion. In this age where the implied meaning of Information Literacy seems to be changing on a monthly basis, it’s not who you know, it’s how you find who knows what you want to know.

It’s entirely possible that friendships may emerge from these connections. There are several people who I have started communicating regularly with since I began blogging and podcasting and I think I can consider them friends. Some of them are people who I’ve admired from afar for quite a while by reading their own blogs or listening to their podcasts. Although social software connected me with them, actual social interaction does not necessarily have to become part of the equation.

One of my favorite examples when teaching faculty about RSS is someone who I simply know as GCPS. I’m a huge fan of GCPS’s del.icio.us account because s/he finds some incredible educational sites. S/He’s the expert that I don’t know. However, the social aspects of del.icio.us connected me with him/her, and I can take advantage of the information that s/he finds. Social software makes the connection, and yet there’s no social interaction at all.

It’s not who you know, it’s how you find who knows what you want to know. Think about that one for a while.

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