PRIVATEBOOK

This article presents an uncommon perspective on social networking sites. Please let me know what you think about this article.

Let us take the case of some of the social networking sites, Facebook having more than billion users, LinkedIn having several hundred million and so on. Such large networks certainly helps in connecting people and keep them connected, but also has the potential to promote rumors, increase spams, reduce privacy, and could result in loss of personal information. Moreover, users can be made part of social experiments without their consent. Most importantly, except for a selected few, majority of the common users have not gained financially other than spending extremely long hours in front of computers, and organizations losing productivity in the process.

For those who prefer more privacy, instead of being part of such large networks, how about being part of a simple technology that would allow anyone to create their own Facebook or, what I call, “Privatebook”. This suggestion aligns with anthropologists’ findings about the limitations of human kind to have quality interactions and relationships beyond a certain size. As per the findings of Dr. Robin Dunbar, the level of connections or, as he calls acquaintanceship,[3] reduces with the increase in the size of the layers.[4] If that were the case, would creating a “Privatebook” still generate enough diversity in connections for individuals? Smaller networks with higher quality certainly appears to have the potential to generate quality community structure, and can also limit the noise coming out of extending connections. This private book based on community networks certainly can have enough exposure to long and short-range neighborhoods, thus generating quality degree of connections for professional opportunities as well. By generating such networks, we might gain in the following ways:

1. Need not dance to the whims and fancies of others

2. Enhanced privacy

3. Quality interactions

4. Potential for our network generating our own revenue/profit stream

How can this be done? - Matter of time, I guess .....

What is Acquaintanceship?

From a management/leadership consultant's/expert's (such as, Stephen Covey's) perspective combined with mathematics: It is equivalent to the concept of circle of influence. For a person, there will be varying levels of circle of influence, with the strength of the influence diminishing with the radius of the circle increasing. As the radius of the circle increases, the distance between the center of the circle to the point of interest increases, thus reducing quality interactions. The radius of circle, and quality of interaction can be limited by geographical, psychological, personal and/or physical interactions.

From a scientific perspective, the person of interest forms the nucleus of an element, and as the size of the element increases, the attraction between the nucleus, and the electrons in the valence shell decreases. This decrease in attraction makes it possible to easily remove electrons from the valence shell by applying even lower amount of energies. In the same way, as the level of acquaintanceship decreases, the quality of interaction goes down, and the level of attraction also goes down.

"How a simple Spambot became the second most powerful member of an Italian Social Network" (August 6th, 2014)

-> Conspiracy Theories in Social Media

"How People Consume Conspiracy Theories on Facebook" (August 14th, 2014)

-> Friends better than Algorithms

Interesting article - Friends more than algorithms direct viewership towards opposing political viewpoints - I guess this further supports the need for Privatebook (May, 2015)