Ok, a nerdy post that began as a thought after realizing how many of my friends are gone.
50 Friends have been removed from my page. After doing some checking I've discovered that most of the people I associate with or did associate with are no longer active on this site. Going through my friends list I've decided to remove the accounts that have gone grey.
I joined SG and Myspace roughly at the same time, and largely the same is true for that site as well. It seems that the life expectancy for my online groups of friends at a given community is about 3 - 6 years.
A few faces aside, the group dynamics have changed so much that they essentially doesn't exist. The biggest cause I can find is that either, people have become so close to one another they no longer need these sites, or they have lost interest all together.
I wonder what the future of online communities will be? If I had to guess I think we are going to see sites like Facebook continue to grow. Following their model for open development, it would appear that eventually we will see a decentralization of power. Meaning that groups within facebook driven by specific applications will essentially become their own communities.
It's smart, because it takes the pressure off facebook to appeal to everyone, but allows them to grow their platform for advertisers. I think single minded communities will always have a place online, just a very small one, as large communities open their doors to third parties allowing them share their structure and resources.
50 Friends have been removed from my page. After doing some checking I've discovered that most of the people I associate with or did associate with are no longer active on this site. Going through my friends list I've decided to remove the accounts that have gone grey.
I joined SG and Myspace roughly at the same time, and largely the same is true for that site as well. It seems that the life expectancy for my online groups of friends at a given community is about 3 - 6 years.
A few faces aside, the group dynamics have changed so much that they essentially doesn't exist. The biggest cause I can find is that either, people have become so close to one another they no longer need these sites, or they have lost interest all together.
I wonder what the future of online communities will be? If I had to guess I think we are going to see sites like Facebook continue to grow. Following their model for open development, it would appear that eventually we will see a decentralization of power. Meaning that groups within facebook driven by specific applications will essentially become their own communities.
It's smart, because it takes the pressure off facebook to appeal to everyone, but allows them to grow their platform for advertisers. I think single minded communities will always have a place online, just a very small one, as large communities open their doors to third parties allowing them share their structure and resources.
Facebook feels different to me, more like an active address book or an arms-length version of IM. I can see what's going on with my friends and they can with me without having to actually interact with each other. My friends are scattered to the four winds, so I find this convenient, but if you live around most of your friends I can imagine that being a mixed bag.