Links to related news items in the tech media

Everybody using any of the large social network services has probably experienced the following problem on many occasions: browsing tons of posts filled in with “funny” cat memes, short videos of “hilarious” fails and other social media garbage just to read one or two really interesting posts written in your friend’s own words and view that one photo from their last week’s wedding.

Social network noise is becoming a phenomenon that drags many users towards niche services. In fact, there is a strong trend towards filtering the content circulating within social networks.

Here are two articles published this year:

Jynx: A social network that nixes everyone you disagree with written by Anthony Domanico refers to a fictional social network envisioned by comedians. While in the real world no one wants to go as far as to create a network only for those who we totally agree with on everything (we’d probably end up having many 1-member social networks), the issue pointed out is clear: we need more personalised and accurate content.
Nattch Wants To Sell A Distraction-Free Social Network by Natasha Loams is in turn an article about the real attempt to create a garbage-free social network called Nattch. Its members are encouraged to post only the content that’s directly related to their life. It is more a good practice that Nattch members shall not post any random stuff. However, this is not a form of censorship but rather the community rule to keep the user input high quality and relevant.

Small.World is built with simplicity and relevance in mind from the start so it follows this trend in a way, making it an outstanding experience comparing to major social networks. It allows members to share only content that’s relevant to them, their friends and the places they are, i.e. only the photos taken and videos recorded right on their devices, no more random YouTube videos.

References

Domanico, A., 2015. Jynx: A Social Network that Nixes Everyone You Disagree with. CBS Interactive Inc. Available at: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/jynx-is-a-social-network-that-removes-everyone-you-disagree-with/ [Accessed April 22, 2015].
Lomas, N., 2015. Nattch Wants To Sell A Distraction-Free Social Network. AOL Inc. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/11/nattch/ [Accessed April 27, 2015].

The advancement in geographical information system (GIS) made the geosocial networking born. Such networking is enriched by geographic services such as geo tagging and geo coding by using coordinates taking from global positioning system (GPS) technology (Ruiz Vicente et al., 2011).

Geo tagging is using geographic metadata to different media such as photo and video. Geo tagging technology is really useful because it gives the exact location of a friend who checked in on to a service. On the other hand, geo codding is the process of adding location information by geographic coordination to identify the addresses such post code or street name etc.

The Geosocial networking is matching users with their place such as (meeting groups, concerts, restaurants etc…) to socialize and facilitating meeting groups and plan activity. Also it gives the opportunity to meet others who are geographically closer and who have similar interests. It is also increase business ability to target more audience and find out what is near you is much easier

However, some times this type of technology leads to privacy invasion by disseminating too much personal information on the web. Pleaserobme.com is a website that criticize ironically to make people aware of oversharing.

Geosocial Networking Concept (Ruiz Vicente et al., 2011)

What is missing in the existing social networking now is building acommunity in real life. This can be achieved by Small.World through using geosocial networking and also enabling friends of friend to see your activities to broaden the network. Meeting people’s with the same interest in the around geographic location give you more options to make more friends in real life.

Refrences

Ruiz Vicente, C., Freni, D., Bettini, C. and Jensen, C. (2011). Location-Related Privacy in Geo-Social Networks. IEEE Internet Comput., 15(3), pp.20-27.