The Anti-Social Network – an opinion.

The Anti-Social Network – an opinion.

As some people may (or may not) have noticed, a rather large social network made a fairly insignificant change to it\’s UI recently.

There then followed a large number of negative comments (at least in the circles I move in) about that change. Please note, the reference to circles does NOT mean I\’m talking about G+ here. And the main comment was along the lines of:

\”I\’ll decide what\’s interesting or relevant, that you very much !\”, followed by much gnashing of teeth and high dudgeon.

So, the question is, how does a company / application / whatever \’decide\’ what\’s relevant to you ? With the best will in the world, machines are still unable to predict an individual\’s behaviour or motivation (although they are rather good at predicting what a large number of people will do).

Just because one of your contacts refers to cycling a lot in their postings, it does not mean that you are also interested in cycling. If a number of your contacts happen to be in the same place, it does not follow that you are interested in events in that place – you could be halfway across the world at the time.

We know from various clever people who design data-mining algorithms that behaviour can be more or less predicted across a social profile, group, key demographic, etc, but the closer you get to one actual person, I believe that the prediction becomes less and less accurate, and therefore more and more intrusive.

There\’s a well-known example in the Analysis Services tutorials from SQL Server. You take a number of facts, and you can then infer that a man of over 40 but under 55, with a wife, two children over the age of 20, and who lives within 5 miles of his workplace is more likely to buy a bicycle in the $500 – $800 range. That\’s well understood.

But it does not mean that every man fitting that profile is in the market for a new bike. Nor does it mean that the largest number of bike sales in that price range are to men in that profile. Data aggregations are great for Business Analysis and shaping future decisions to increase revenue or broaden market share, and even (in one case I know of) change the business model entirely to focus on what they do well that generates the best bottom line. But, when it comes down to actual people (not business) it\’s less useful.

However, we live in an age where e-marketing / e-advertising is largely free (the return rate can be as low as 1 -100,000 and profit will still made), so I can\’t see there being a shift away from inappropriate \’recommendations\’ any time soon.

It\’s just that I don\’t like being second-guessed by software. It\’s creepy, and usually wrong.

Back soon…