*Update* psychological mechanism: Forwarding a genuinely amusing or interesting link to a friend, for example, shows that you are thinking of them and are aware of the sort of content they like, Gross says. But passing an irrelevant or out-of-date link on to contacts can be annoying, thus lowering the sender's social status in the recipient’s eyes. [http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7662&feedId=online-news_rss20 Email forwarding amounts to ritual gift exchange] *Update* It seems that [http://www.1729.com/womcat/ Womcat] is exactly what I was speculating about here. == Social Routing == This is my attempt to build a model of how implicite SocialNetworkingSoftware could work. The reasoning against explicite SocialNetworkingSoftware I presented in CritisizmOfExpliciteSocialNetworkingSoftware. The main purpose of Social Networking Software seems to me to be disseminating messages along the social ties. The power of the network would come from the fact that the messages would not be stopped at the first hop - but would be passed from node to node according to internal algorithms implemented by the nodes. Being connected means more than simply being online, or being plugged in. It means being in the loop and serving as a transitive node in the network. We are encouraged less to "speak" than to "repeat," less to converse and more to pass along. From [http://www.gravity7.com/articles_arguments.html Communication Technology: Main Arguments] by Adrian Chan. We allready have tools for creating and disseminating new information, now we need tools for efficient 'routing' of information we have found somewhere, and this is subtely different task from publishing new materials, with different economy of tradeoffs. I postulate the following properties for software tools augmenting the routing of messages in the social network: 0 the routing is automatic but managed by the user of the node 0 the user does not need to check all the routed messages, but can 0 every user can choose his own routing algorithm 0 the routing algorithms can compete between themselves and evolve by natural selection The key assumption with this architecture is that every user will have incentive to improve his node. Since the goodness of the user's node will affect mostly his nearest affiliates this is, I believe, a well supported assumption. This does not differ very much from the way we act today, we do route information about, for example, job offerings to our friends. == Blogs and SocialRouting == The idea presented on this page is not very far from what is allready happening in the blogsphere where memes are routed from blog to blog. What I want to do is to make the mechanism feasible to carry classifieds. To reach this goal we need to make the mechanism automatic (or semiautomatic) - so that the intermediate routers don't need to check every routed advertisement but rather think in the category of trusted sources. == SocialRouting and trust (or should it be better called reliability?) == It seems that the message passing in SocialNetworks should be based on trust relations. Yet trust is a very complicated concept. It might be difficult to build a good mathematical model of the psychological concept of trust, necessary to build a software system acting according to trust between people. What I propose is a shortcut. Instead of building a general mathematical model of trust I propose to let the user guide the software how to act. I propose an implicit trust. That is why I postulate that every node should have an independent routing algorithm - so that every user could choose his own rules for routing to express his own personal trust. Yet another argument for implicit trust is that it is more 'compatible' with our traditional social behaviour: http://www.intimateornot.com/papers/Boyd.pdf "Friendster fails to understand that publicliy articulating one's social network and idenity does not provide the same level of trust and meaning as the behaviour driven offline equivalent." The Sqeak Community uses apparently a very similar trust model: [http://people.squeakfoundation.org/trust-metric.html Squeak People's trust metric]. I think this is the [http://www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html Advogato Trust metric] -- paolo A similar model can be found in: [http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/wearables/Papers/HUC2K.pdf Disseminating Trust Information in Wearable Communities]. In their model links are generated by phisical proximity - this is the outcome of their choosen technology, but the model can be translated to one using any social interaction as a link. == UseCases == See SocialRoutingUseCases. == Possible Implementations == * In blogs via the [http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/FrontPage Atom] API. This can catch popularity since it fits so well in the weblog paradigm. * In [http://www.jabber.org jabber] instant messaging. Jabber is an XML routing protocol, perhaps by some plugins in the jabber clients (or servers) we can let people to implement their routing algorithms (see [http://arch.jabber.com/archives/2004/04/000099.html Pub/Sub distribution trees] a note describing something going directly in the direction of SocialRouting). Recently I think that the needed technology to support SocialRouting is PublishSubscribe. == Considerations == This might be inefficient for really broadcasting messages to everyone - since it will be routed multiple paths. But it was the starting point to depart from the current, abused by spammers, internet email architecture, in the direction of where messages can be sent only along some paths in the SocialNetwork. But [http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0406152 Scalable Percolation Search in Power Law Networks] by Nima Sarshar, P.Oscar Boykin, Vwani P. Roychowdhury seems to suggest that in a power law network it might be very efficient. ---- Related links: * [http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1399365,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594 Look Out, Outlook: RSS Ahead in 2004] by Steve Gillmor: "Content-generation tools based on small, routable XHTML objects", "Metadata-driven directories that dynamically create RSS feeds based on affinity" and "Self-forming and reordering subscriptions lists based on the aggregated priorities of user-chosen domain experts" is exactly what I am talking about here. * It all started with the thread [http://cluster.tribe.net/tribe/servlet/template/ViewThread.vm?threadid=234be382-3932-46b9-a05d-2be61ab9cf1a&tribeid=ab71d309-3387-455c-90cb-c84dfc3d1d0f "Speculations on a FOAF baset network system"] on www.tribe.net. I presented there my vision how a distributed system for disseminating information based on social roules could work. The system should be an ecosystem of nodes. * [http://collaboratory.planetwork.net/linktank_whitepaper THE AUGMENTED SOCIAL NETWORK: BUILDING IDENTITY AND TRUST INTO THE NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET] * [http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/01/21/link_propagation_and_discovery_credit.php Link propagation and "discovery credit"] * A very detailed proposal of environement that can be used for SocialRouting is presented in [http://www.gradman.com/projects/dss/final/index.html Distributed Social Software] by Eric Gradman. The article concentrates on explicite networks but the mentioned security features, in fact, can be used for creating more implicite networks. * [Free Reporter http://matrixpn.auriga.wearlab.de/] and a paper on the design: [http://matrixpn.auriga.wearlab.de/freeporter-mgain_presentation/nicolai04beafreeporter.pdf Be a Free Reporter] - that's really SocialRouting with ready software. ---- Possible use cases here? : http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/10/31/43OPstrategic_1.html ---- == Temp == What each of the older accountability arenas has -- and today's Internet lacks -- is centripetal focus. A counterbalancing inward pull. Something that acts to draw foes together for fair confrontation, after making their preparations in safe seclusion. No, I'm not talking about goody-goody communitarianism and "getting along." Far from it. Elections, courtrooms, retail stores and scientific conferences all provide fierce testing grounds, where adversaries come together to have it out... and where civilization ultimately profits from their passion and hard work. From [http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society's Benefit] an article by David Brin, Ph.D. I belive social routing with the reputation economy of subscribed sources can act here as the testing ground just like the market economy works for business. http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/02/1748219&tid=192&tid=6