Have we reached the breaking point? Has our collective exhaustion with social media — the incessant notifications, the oppressive filter bubbles, the outright denial of our individuality — finally exhausted the excuses, apologies, and band-aid fixes?
Here’s the #ElephantInTheRoom: The social graph is a terrible basis for matching people to information. This is probably not a message that will be welcomed by the corporate giants and countless ventures that are banking on the social graph, but it’s an argument that’s long overdue. The social graph must die.
To be clear, the social graph is not social media. The former is the model or representation of the relationships between people. It’s the foundation upon which social media services match people to information. And in this capacity, the social graph is irredeemable.
Social Graphs Don’t Make Sense
Every model of information matching that’s based on the social graph assumes this proposition to be true: People share common interests.
It’s such an obvious statement, it’s rarely challenged. But when examined in the context of a network, that is a social graph, the fallacy is obvious. If you imagine that any individual in your network shares some of your interests, you’ll concede that they hold interests that diverge from yours…
