Social networks map

I spotted this image in my Google+ stream.  I think it’s one of the best attempts at guiding people as to which social network they should use for this or that status update.  Very well done!

12 thoughts on “Social networks map”


  1. Yeah, I use Google+ occasionally. Not a lot of my friends are there. But there’s an excellent bunch of photographers, and people who work at Google. Photographers provide me with inspiration, Googlers – with technical insight.

    As for my posting preferences, my first choice to post is pretty much always this blog. All updates are pushed to Twitter. I also tweet once in a while. My tweets are pushed to Facebook, which I don’t really use. Only when an email notification comes in or something like that. I use Foursquare to check-in a lot. But I don’t really leave much comments or photos there. And I really don’t post anything to LinkedIn ever. I think it gets either Twitter or Facebook updates automatically, but I don’t really care. I used LinkedIn for other things.


      1. In the blog I mostly share things that I find interesting. There is a bit of communication in the comments. With my friends, I mostly use Skype, Google Talk, and email to chat during the day.

        Not all of my friends use RSS. Some just visit the site once in a while.


          1. Social networks are not a substitution to instant messaging and email. Also, social networks are often blocked at work places, while email and Skype are not.

            And then there is always the problem with the variety of social networks. There are global ones – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, local ones (Cyprus Forum, for example), and language/Russian specific (VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, etc). Some people are here, some there…


  2. Right, and IM/e-mail is not a substitute for a conversation in a group of more than two people:)
    BTW, Google+ is not blocked at work, as far as I know :)
    The real issue is inertia: many Russians are stuck in VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, etc., though, as far as I understood, the majority of Russian middle class migrated to Facebook, and they are not yet freaked out by FB’s arrogant attitude towards their personal data.
    Tastes are different, and and you are right: people are all over the soc. network space. I wonder whether anyone will ever suggest a viable solution to this problem.


    1. As for group conversations, I much prefer mailing lists and IRC to all the social networks in the world. In my (personal) experience, people in mailing lists and IRC are more likely to LISTEN. Social networks are more like broadcasts – everybody talks, nobody listens.

      As for the solution to the variety of social networks – I don’t think there will ever be a solution. Like many other things, it is both a bug and a feature. Different networks offer different features, user experiences, etc. There are even tools that aggregate a few things together, like FriendFeed, etc. Most social networks these days have APIs that are used by plugins and extensions, integrating them between each other. Google+, by the way, is very weak in this regard. Probably because it is too young.

      And as for privacy – I said it before and I’ll say it again – privacy is dead. There is no control of it anymore. Digital technology is both cheap and, mostly, insecure. No matter what a person decides to share – someone else will post photos of him online, someone will break into government servers and publish private data, and so on and so forth. I’m not advocating opening all doors and allowing everyone to look at everything, no. Just hoping for people to have a more realistic view of how things are these days.


      1. I guess I have been much more lucky with my on-line community: we do listen :) We could have this conversation in a bigger company on G+, BTW :)

        No hope for a solution? I think that conceptually integration of notifications and commenting is possible. If anything is gonna be in the way, I bet it will most likely be competition among the big networks and their commercial interests, not the technology.


        1. Using the blog for discussions helps centralize things and keep archives. This site has discussions still attached to post and archived to as far as October 2001 – way before Google+, Facebook, or even Twitter existed. ;)

          For notifications, RSS is an excellent technology. I wish more people new how to use it. Including the gateways to post feed items to email, blog, or other social networks. I don’t think it will get any better than that.


          1. I also favor keeping archives. I have noticed, however, that the majority of people don’t care about it. Some of my friends even built a philosophy around it – about our inevitable migration from the ordered world into a cloud where searching tools rule :) (I view this as placing Google on the altar.)

            The two philosophies peacefully coexisted in the world of G-Reader and Buzz, where my friends had their chaotic Buzz Stream, and I had my ordered folders in GReader.
            I became really concerned about loosing my cherished Google-hosted archives after Google started killing its products one after another – the Wave first, and then commenting and friends in GReader. So far I still manage to archive public G+ items (e.g. http://www.google.com/reader/s.....%2FFinance , which I now fear for since http://googleplusrss.nodester.com/ has been down since March 26), but I have been looking at the development of P2P networks, which give us a (false?) hope of become independent of the giants. What do you think about those?
            Sure, you feel safer with a blog on your own server and with backups, but the question is whether this safety is worth being practically alone here. Also, what if something happens to you? (I know, you are too young to think about it; I got these thoughts only after my mother’s death.) I guess, this blog is hosted on your server, not at WP, right? If so, this blog would most likely be stored in a closet in your family house until your son would get old enough to get interested :), and those who commented here will have no access to their comments, unless they systematically save them somewhere else.
            BTW, I have been trying to figure out why people enjoy posting in isolated blogs, where very few posts get any feedback. Could you explain?

            As for feeds, in my experience, very few of them (if any) update on commenting (note, e.g., that The Feed for Content from Project 365 on Flickr shows only new picture postings, but does not provide comment updates), and without it it is difficult to follow what’s going on. I have found follow-ups for my own comments in “Recent Activity,” but I could not figure out how to easily find new comments to friends’ pictures (my experience at Fotki has shown looking at such comments to be very stimulating and interesting). I am not surprised that many people from Flickr moved to G+, including my old web friend https://plus.google.com/u/0/105519285935184162786/about, who works at Google, BTW :) I don’t know, however, how Flickr groups work, so maybe I am missing the point of Flickr.

            1. I also favor keeping archives. I have noticed, however, that the majority of people don’t care about it. Some of my friends even built a philosophy around it — about our inevitable migration from the ordered world into a cloud where searching tools rule :) (I view this as placing Google on the altar.)

              Archiving is a tricky thing. One has to do it for a while to see the value of it. And people usually don’t do things they don’t see a while of. Photographs are different, for example. By the time most people are old enough to think about whether to archive photographs or not, they already have albums of childhood pictures, archived by their parents. So the value is obvious. With blog posts, comments, status updates, tweets, and shared links – it’s not that obvious. Especially, given that most people are new to this whole online thing. Most don’t see the value yet. But they will. For now, though, the excuses are good enough. :)

              I became really concerned about loosing my cherished Google-hosted archives after Google started killing its products one after another

              I felt the same. I used to do more things on Google Reader – comment, share, discuss. Eventually, most of that disappeared. Now I pretty much use it just for reading. If I need to share, I blog or tweet, or, rarely, Google+ items.

              but I have been looking at the development of P2P networks, which give us a (false?) hope of become independent of the giants. What do you think about those?

              P2P networks are distributed by nature and they are better than most centralized solutions. But in terms of “MY CONTENT”, they don’t quite solve the problem, since I have to still rely on other people. I just get “peers” instead of “corporations”. That’s an improvement, but not a solution. One of the reasons that I choose to use my own blog is because I am in control of it, nobody else. I choose software, configurations, backup plans, hosting locations, and pretty much everything else. That doesn’t mean that my blog won’t vanish one day (like it almost did a couple of years ago). But that does mean that whatever happens to it is my success or failure.

              I understand though, that I, as a technical person, have an advantage here that most people don’t. For those who are not technical, I suggest sticking as close to Open Source community, as possible.

              Sure, you feel safer with a blog on your own server and with backups, but the question is whether this safety is worth being practically alone here.

              The first and most important reader of my blog is me. I post things here which are important to me, things that I want to easily find later, or remember at a later stage. I love receiving comments, of course, but I’m not disappointed when I don’t.

              On top of that, technology is getting better. All my blog posts are now automatically pushed to Twitter, and from there to Facebook and LinkedIn. People who don’t visit my blog on a regular basis or subscribe to my RSS still comment and provide feedback on social networks. So that way, I don’t really lose anything. Sometimes, I’m even able to pull that feedback back into the blog (twitter digests, comment integration plugins at different stages of life of this blog, aggregated RSS feeds, social network trackers, pingbacks, etc).

              Also, what if something happens to you?

              I don’t think I’ll care much about anything after that. :) My blog is hosted on my own server, and I have enough sysadmin friends (including my brother), who’ll know how to move, save, and archive it. That is if they would care. And if the won’t – then it SHOULD disappear. I think that’s how nature is supposed to work. :)

              Also, now that we are in the days of really cheap storage, a lot of initiatives cache the Web, including this blog, frequently. Google Cache, Internet Archive (Wayback machine), and others, make sure that the good bits are saved. The noise – nobody cares about.

              BTW, I have been trying to figure out why people enjoy posting in isolated blogs, where very few posts get any feedback. Could you explain?

              I guess, blogs are more like personal journals, diaries, or notebooks, rather than chats or forums. Some people go as far as close commenting on their blogs altogether. And others, even make their blogs private. Very opposite of social networking, I must say. :)

              I have found follow-ups for my own comments in “Recent Activity,” but I could not figure out how to easily find new comments to friends’ pictures (my experience at Fotki has shown looking at such comments to be very stimulating and interesting).

              Flickr has grown immensely in the last few years. They’ve added a whole lot of features, that I’m not even half-familiar. Different people use Flickr very differently. Some just use it as a storage for all pictures (like my brother), others use it to promote their work (with group discussions, and themed groups), and so on and so forth. Given that Flickr is trying to pull more users in, it is somewhat logical that they’ve created an internal messaging system. Once you register, subscribe to groups and use Flickr (as opposite of an external system, like RSS reader or email) to interact with it, it sort of works. You get popups, notifications to email if you missed something, etc.

              I used to be an active user a few years ago. But now I don’t really care. I use it as an online storage for all my pictures.

              Just remembered something else – when I was looking for feedback to my photos from people who are interested in photography, I used another community – that of PhotoSig (http://www.photosig.com/). They got me started on photography books pretty fast. :)

              I am not surprised that many people from Flickr moved to G+

              Yup. A lot of photographers are on Google+. But a lot of them are on Flickr too. One thing that I like better on Flickr is access control (Public/Friends/Family/Private), and URL structure for archives. For example, if I want to see all pictures that I shot on February 23, 2005, all I need to do is:

              http://www.flickr.com/photos/m.....005/02/23/

              By the way, I’ve blogged my move from Flickr to Picasa and back. Here is one of the posts.

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