Interest graph (interest graph): a new principle of interaction in the network
A couple of months ago I was very touched by the publication of the Perfect Social Network . The author of this publication, arilou-campe , outlined the dominant principles on which most of the social interaction in the modern network is built, and then he tried to suggest on what principles this interaction will be built in the near future.
I want to continue and clarify his idea, to voice several important and fruitful, in my opinion, concepts (the “graph of interests” is one of them), around which today there is a discussion about the future development of the network, and also to cite several projects ( above one of which I myself am working on now), already implementing in practice new principles of social interaction: the very principles that can become dominant in the very near future.
So, the modern dominant principle of interaction in the network is the principle of "social network". This principle is embodied by such services as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, LiveJournal and many others. Interaction in "social networks" involves the implementation of two important practices:
In social networks, I get new information from the circle of people with whom I recorded some kind of connection. These links can be called differently: contacts, friends, acquaintances, readers, subscribers. Relationships can be bilateral (if I read you, then you necessarily read me), and they can be one-sided (if I read you, then you do not have to read me).
But despite all these visible differences, everywhere we see the same picture. Most of the links in the social network are recorded with those people whom I learned outside the network, with whom I established these links without the mediation of the service itself. Moreover, once fixed relationships persist for a long time and change little over time. These can be my friends, classmates, colleagues, celebrities. The social network allows me to repeat the structure of my connections, which already exist and besides 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 be aware of what excites those people whom I know or are curious to me. Another social network probably allows you to keep in touch with a much larger number of people than was possible without it, and to increase the magic number of Dunbar , equal to 150 contacts.
Facebook personal social graph card (created using the application http://apps.facebook.com/socgraph/ )
However, in real life, if I strive to gain new experience or new knowledge, I most likely appeal to new people, I seek new connections. And the social network does not provide me with any serious tools for finding such people and for creating links with them. I am closed in my social graph, and in order to change it, I have to go beyond the social network and create new connections myself, without its help.
Moreover, these new connections are formed with different people for various reasons. As a rule, behind a new connection lies jointly experienced concrete experience, some definite joint practice. But fixing the new connection in the social network and starting to receive information from my new contact, I’m not connecting to our joint practice, but to the whole person, to his whole life. Which may not interest me at all.
Moreover, if I am really interested in something, I will look for information according to my interest, regardless of whether I receive it from a person I know or from a stranger. And if I am interested in something new, most likely it will turn out that none of my friends have ever been interested in this and will hardly be able to help me. And if I still only know about something, what would I like, but I can’t articulate it exactly? How can I make the information I need come to me myself, and from those people whom I do not even know yet: so that I can discover it (discover), and not find (search)?
How should the network be organized in order to overcome all the problems that a social network cannot overcome? What principle of interaction 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." Picture taken from http://blog.fantoon.com/2011/07/24/interest-graph/
Recently, various projects have begun to meet, one way or another implementing a new principle of interaction in the network - not through the social connection of users, but through the community of their interests.
The pioneer practical and consistent implementation of the “graph of interests” concept can certainly be considered the Quora English-language project , open to the general public in June 2010. Behind the external façade of the question and answer service is the system of user interaction through common interests. In this service, the interests are called topics. Each Quora member describes his or her range of interests by subscribing (follow) to certain topics. Each published question is also tied to the topics to which it relates. And if the topics specified by the user coincide with the topics of the question, then the user sees this question in his feed. Those. Information is transmitted not through social links, but through channels of links with the same interests .
Unfortunately, the narrow clarity of this wonderful service on the question and answer functionality limits the area of ​​user interaction to the virtual space of multimedia messages. Quora doesn’t seem to have the prospect of providing its users with a joint experience of practical joint activities outside the network.
And I myself am working on a project called HappLink . He has not yet left the beta testing stage - a lot of things still need to be corrected and put in order. But be that as it may, we are trying to consistently implement the principle of user interaction in this project through their interests. In HappLink, each user also describes himself by indicating his interests. And in the same way, each publication is tied to specific interests, which allows you to receive in your feed the information that corresponds to your interests.
But what is 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, telling about your “intention” or organizing an “event”. The intention and the event is not only tied to the interests, but also to a specific place.
The main challenge that the graph of interests throws to those developers who undertake to put it into practice is the need to create filtering tools that would allow you to customize the flow of information as closely as possible to your current interests. We must be able to provide the user with the opportunity at any time to receive only the information that corresponds to his current, quickly and easily changeable card of interests, with which he describes himself. The social map is difficult to transform and slowly changes over time. The interest link map must overcome this significant limitation.
I want to continue and clarify his idea, to voice several important and fruitful, in my opinion, concepts (the “graph of interests” is one of them), around which today there is a discussion about the future development of the network, and also to cite several projects ( above one of which I myself am working on now), already implementing in practice new principles of social interaction: the very principles that can 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". This principle is embodied by such services as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, LiveJournal and many others. Interaction in "social networks" involves the implementation of two important practices:
- I interact mainly with those people with whom I 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 the social graph . In abstraction, a social graph looks like a set of nodes that designate people, and lines between nodes, which designate connections between people.
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The concept of a social graph has been actively used to comprehend the modern network since May 2007, after having been voiced at the first F8 Facebook conference. - I regularly review the latest information from people with whom I have recorded connections (I am not looking for new information - new information comes to me myself).
This method of obtaining information is called discovery and is opposed to search.
In social networks, I get new information from the circle of people with whom I recorded some kind of connection. These links can be called differently: contacts, friends, acquaintances, readers, subscribers. Relationships can be bilateral (if I read you, then you necessarily read me), and they can be one-sided (if I read you, then you do not have to read me).
But despite all these visible differences, everywhere we see the same picture. Most of the links in the social network are recorded with those people whom I learned outside the network, with whom I established these links without the mediation of the service itself. Moreover, once fixed relationships persist for a long time and change little over time. These can be my friends, classmates, colleagues, celebrities. The social network allows me to repeat the structure of my connections, which already exist and besides 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 be aware of what excites those people whom I know or are curious to me. Another social network probably allows you to keep in touch with a much larger number of people than was possible without it, and to increase the magic number of Dunbar , equal to 150 contacts.
Facebook personal social graph card (created using the application http://apps.facebook.com/socgraph/ )
However, in real life, if I strive to gain new experience or new knowledge, I most likely appeal to new people, I seek new connections. And the social network does not provide me with any serious tools for finding such people and for creating links with them. I am closed in my social graph, and in order to change it, I have to go beyond the social network and create new connections myself, without its help.
Moreover, these new connections are formed with different people for various reasons. As a rule, behind a new connection lies jointly experienced concrete experience, some definite joint practice. But fixing the new connection in the social network and starting to receive information from my new contact, I’m not connecting to our joint practice, but to the whole person, to his whole life. Which may not interest me at all.
Moreover, if I am really interested in something, I will look for information according to my interest, regardless of whether I receive it from a person I know or from a stranger. And if I am interested in something new, most likely it will turn out that none of my friends have ever been interested in this and will hardly be able to help me. And if I still only know about something, what would I like, but I can’t articulate it exactly? How can I make the information I need come to me myself, and from those people whom I do not even know yet: so that I can discover it (discover), and not find (search)?
Interest graph
How should the network be organized in order to overcome all the problems that a social network cannot overcome? What principle of interaction 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 people who share my interests, gaining recognition from them and making new connections. Moreover, I interact not only virtually, communicating online, but also realistically, together experiencing a new experience.
Recently, in discussions on the network - as opposed to the concept of a “social graph” - the concept of an “ interest graph ” ( interest graph ) has emerged. The graph of interests describes a system consisting of people, interests, and connections between. And if in the social graph there is only one type of relationship “person-person”, then in the column of interests there are three types of connection: “person-person”, “person-interest”, “interest-interest”.
In essence, the graph of interests creates an additional new dimension and, in abstraction, looks like a social graph lying on a plane above which a third dimension is built in the form of knots-interests. 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 relations can occur after the establishment of relations through interests.
The concept of the graph of interests was first voiced 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 itself comes to me, in accordance with my interests).
Illustration of the "graph of interests." Picture taken from http://blog.fantoon.com/2011/07/24/interest-graph/
Recently, various projects have begun to meet, one way or another implementing a new principle of interaction in the network - not through the social connection of users, but through the community of their interests.
The pioneer practical and consistent implementation of the “graph of interests” concept can certainly be considered the Quora English-language project , open to the general public in June 2010. Behind the external façade of the question and answer service is the system of user interaction through common interests. In this service, the interests are called topics. Each Quora member describes his or her range of interests by subscribing (follow) to certain topics. Each published question is also tied to the topics to which it relates. And if the topics specified by the user coincide with the topics of the question, then the user sees this question in his feed. Those. Information is transmitted not through social links, but through channels of links with the same interests .
Unfortunately, the narrow clarity of this wonderful service on the question and answer functionality limits the area of ​​user interaction to the virtual space of multimedia messages. Quora doesn’t seem to have the prospect of providing its users with a joint experience of practical joint activities outside the network.
And I myself am working on a project called HappLink . He has not yet left the beta testing stage - a lot of things still need to be corrected and put in order. But be that as it may, we are trying to consistently implement the principle of user interaction in this project through their interests. In HappLink, each user also describes himself by indicating his interests. And in the same way, each publication is tied to specific interests, which allows you to receive in your feed the information that corresponds to your interests.
But what is 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, telling about your “intention” or organizing an “event”. The intention and the event is not only tied to the interests, but also to a specific place.
The main challenge that the graph of interests throws to those developers who undertake to put it into practice is the need to create filtering tools that would allow you to customize the flow of information as closely as possible to your current interests. We must be able to provide the user with the opportunity at any time to receive only the information that corresponds to his current, quickly and easily changeable card of interests, with which he describes himself. The social map is difficult to transform and slowly changes over time. The interest link map must overcome this significant limitation.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/129488/
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