“Ambient Awareness” in Social Networks?

socialnetwork.pngClive Thompson has an interesting piece in the last New York Times Magazine that explores the concept of “ambient awareness” as manifested in social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. I find this concept of ambient awareness fascinating, and the article presents an interesting perspective on the potential effects, and even possible value, of using these tools.


Ambient awareness refers to the peripheral information we pick up from people when we spend time with them, based on things they say and body language. We piece together this information to build a picture of the people we care about and what’s going on in their lives.

Thompson suggests that microblogging tools like Twitter and status updates in Facebook allow for ambient awareness in an online setting. Microblogs are tools that allow for blogging in very short bursts; Twitter, for example, is limited to 140 characters per post. To many people, the concept of microblogging comes off as inane. These tools could be thought of as taking blogs (which, in some circles, are already looked at in disdain) and boiling away the value of in-depth analysis and critiques in favor of brevity.

While microblog updates tend to be very short, they’re also more frequent than traditional blog posts, with some active users effectively broadcasting their blow-by-blow activities of the day. For lots of folks, as Thompson says “particularly anyone over the age of 30,” what could be more pointless that knowing what kind of sandwich your friend just ate?

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as [39-year old Twitter user Ben] Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

“It’s like I can distantly read everyone’s mind,” Haley went on to say. “I love that. I feel like I’m getting to something raw about my friends. It’s like I’ve got this heads-up display for them.” It can also lead to more real-life contact, because when one member of Haley’s group decides to go out to a bar or see a band and Twitters about his plans, the others see it, and some decide to drop by — ad hoc, self-organizing socializing. And when they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they’ve never actually been apart. They don’t need to ask, “So, what have you been up to?” because they already know. Instead, they’ll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.

Beyond the notion of ambient awareness, Thompson suggests that there is a large potential value in the ability of these tools to form large numbers of casual connections. A person who is particularly active on a tool like Facebook or Twitter still has the same size core group of close friends that most people have, but they also have a greatly expanded network of “weak ties.”

This rapid growth of weak ties can be a very good thing. Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems. For example, if you’re looking for a job and ask your friends, they won’t be much help; they’re too similar to you, and thus probably won’t have any leads that you don’t already have yourself. Remote acquaintances will be much more useful, because they’re farther afield, yet still socially intimate enough to want to help you out.

Should you care about ambient awareness and what it can do for you? Maybe not, but as instructors interacting with a generation of students for whom Facebook is a way of life, thinking about ambient awareness might help us understand how students who use these tools act and build not just social but academic and professional connections as well. As a user of Twitter, I’ve been hard-pressed to explain the “value” of using it, but perhaps ambient awareness is the answer.

Personally I’m quite interested in this concept and eager to hear more about how microblogging and social networking tools might affect the ways people work and learn.
Check out the full article online: Brave New Worlds of Digital Intimacy
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html

Read more:

Our post about Twitter as an emerging Web 2.0 technology
http://websites.umass.edu/teachoit/2008/04/30/web-20-wednesday-6-twitter/

Alex Beam of the Boston Globe shares his lack of interest with Twitter in: “Twittering with excitement? Hardly.”
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2008/08/16/twittering_with_excitement_hardly/

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