purple motes

Behavioral technology correlates sociality and communication.  The design of inorganic technologies such as the telephone, email, SMS, and various web-based interfaces for social networking affect both the kinds of social networks among users and characteristics of communication among users.  For example, allowing anonymous commenting typically leads to a higher number of comments but also more rule-violating comments.

Studies of non-human animals show that organic technology also correlates sociality and communication. Among rhesus macaques, females spend much more time grooming other group-mates than do males. Females also more frequently make close-range social vocalizations than do males.  Female bonding characterizes rhesus macaques as a biological species.  That same biology also generates more frequent female social vocalizations.[1]

Across rhesus, pigtail, and stumptail macaques, less frequent and less varied gestural communication are associated with less complex social dynamics.  A study of gestural communication in these three species found:

the gestural repertoire of rhesus macaques is generally poor in comparison to that of pigtail macaques, and especially that of stumptail macaques. Rhesus macaques exhibit fewer signals and use some of them with a lower frequency than the other species.[2]

Rhesus macaques' relatively poor gestural repertoire is associated with a relatively simply social structure:

In a despotic and nepotistic society like that of rhesus macaques there may be little pressure to develop a sophisticated system of affiliative signals and bonding patterns. Maintenance of group structure and coordination of behavior between individuals can be effectively achieved if a few unequivocal indicators of differences in dominance are recognized and if unrelated or distantly-ranked individuals simply avoid each other. In pigtailed macaques, instead, complex dynamics of intergroup cooperation and high levels of social tolerance appear to have led to the evolution of intense affiliative communication and bonding patterns.[3]

The evolutionary forces that created these three distinct species of macaques created both their characteristic social structures and their characteristic patterns of communication.

Comparisons with less detail but covering more species similarly show correlation between increased sociality and better communication capabilities.  In forty-two non-human primate species for which data are available, social group size (the number of animals with which a given animal forms social bonds) correlates with vocal repertoire size (the number of acoustically distinct vocal signals the animal makes). [4] Assuming equal times for each signal and an equal probability of using each signal, the organism's signaling bandwidth in bits is proportional to the logarithm of the number of signals it makes.  More generally, biological communication bandwidth increases with an increase in the number of distinct signals that an organism makes.   Greater bandwidth indicates better communication capabilities.  In non-human primates, better communication capabilities are thus correlated with larger social group sizes.

Notes:

[1] Greeno, Nathalie C. and Stuart Semple (2008), "Sex differences in vocal communication among adult rhesus macaques," Evolution & Human Behavior - 10 November 2008 (10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.09.002).

[2] Maestripieri, Dario (2005), "Gestural communication in three species of macaques (Macaca mulatta, M. nemestrina, M. arctoides)," Gesture 5:1/2, p. 69.

[3] Id. p. 70.

[4] McComb, Karen, and Stuart Semple (2005), "Coevolution of vocal communication and sociality in primates," Biology Letters, Dec. 22; 1(4): 381-385.  The data for the graph above is from this source and is available in spreadsheet form here.   In doing cross-species comparisons, controling for phylogenetic relations is important.  Id. does this, but the graph above does not.  Nonetheless, the picture is similar.

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In studying the long tale, I came across these questions from an author thought to be not beautiful:

vous ne puissiez parler un quart d'heure à une Femme si elle n'est pas belle : et que vous sortiez mesme d'une visite, où il en arrivera quelqu'une qui sera laide. Cependant tous les jeunes gens ont presques cette sorte d'injustice : et il y en a mesme qui sont laids, de la derniere laideur, qui ne peuvent souffrir celle d'une Femme. En effet ils veulent que les plus beaux yeux du monde, les regardent favorablement : et ils veulent de plus quelquesfois ne regarder que de belles Femmes, avec les plus laids yeux de la Terre.

[(to the gathered men of the salon) Why can't you spend fifteen minutes talking to a woman who isn't beautiful?  Why must you leave abruptly simply because an unattractive woman arrives on the scene?  It seems that all young men commit this sort of injustice -- even those who are ugly, incredibly ugly, can't endure a woman's ugliness.  In fact, they want the fairest eyes in the world to look favorably upon them while they look upon beautiful women with the ugliest eyes in the world.]

Humans, throughout history, have been shallow and self-absorbed.  Extensively networking and communicating doesn't change those characteristics and may even exacerbate them.

Quoted text: Scudéry, Madeleine. Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus (Paris: 1653), p. 6957. In site Artamene. Institut de Littérature Française Moderne. Université de Neuchâtel. [on line: http://www.artamene.org/cyrus10.xml?page=6957].  English translation: Scudéry, Madeleine de, and Karen Newman. 2003. The story of Sapho. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 37.

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Social networks are having difficulty generating advertising revenue (more discussion). Search is valuable for advertising because ads can help users get what they are seeking in their search. On social networking sites, users primarily engage in presence-oriented communication. If ads in those circumstances are even noticed, they are mainly an undesired distraction.

Social networks need to encourage their users to generate ad-relevant circumstances. Recommendations from friends is a major influence on purchasing behavior. The challenge is to organize "recommendations from friends" within social networks so as to add value to those recommendations and not undermine the non-instrumental quality of friendship. Doing this may require social networks to integrate into more field-specific sharing of information.

Consider a dining record service. Users would be provided with tools to build a database of what, where, and when they ate out in a restaurant. Users are likely to find this much easier than writing a restaurant review. Moreover, users are more likely to recognize the value to themselves of creating a record of their dining activities. It would be like the highly successfully LibraryThing, but instead of what you have in your library, this service would be about what you've put in your stomach.

A social network with a large number of users would a valuable asset for building a dining record service. Many web entrepreneurs could easily create a dining record service. But database scale (e.g. for identifying local patterns of taste) would be a key competitive advantage. Social networks could help build scale for a dining record service because dining together is such a socially significant experience. The total number of meals eaten together is probably one of the best indices of real friendship. Not inviting someone to dinner, and then plotting to make sure that they know they weren't invited, or that don't learn that they weren't invited, is ubiquitous social drama. Social networks have the sort of tools for enabling, sharing, and managing that social drama.

Dining record pages would be valuable action inventory for advertising. A user creating or reviewing records about where she or he has eaten would probably value advertisements about other places to eat. She or he might then also value diet ads. And exercise ads! The more you exercise, the more times you can go to that favorite restaurant of yours.

To be successful, social networks may need a more integrated and specialized information organization than widget-based applications can deliver.

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How has YouTube succeeded? YouTube makes uploading and sharing videos free and easy. It has hosted some popular high-quality clips and stimulated calls for a copyright-brawl-of-the-millennium. These are well-recognized aspects of YouTube. But consider the outpouring of sympathy for Martin. YouTube has also succeeded as an innovative communications service.

Social networks and communications services are closely related. Robert Young, an insightful industry analyst, recently noted:

communications ultimately serves as the anchor feature and the driver of retention and growth. …when dealing with an online community, that one lasting activity is almost always communications. … Social networks, which are rapidly becoming the portals of the next generation, must place high strategic priority on their communications functionality if they wish to continue their pace of traffic growth, usage, and retention.

Mirroring this remark, Norman Lewis of Orange, a mobile communications service provider, suggested at the Telco2.0 Industry Brainstorm:

Any future applications which do not have a social networking aspect to them will be irrelevant. If we don't understand that, we won't have a business in the future.

YouTube shows communication service providers that video can be important driver of communication. On the other hand, sharing video, like providing VoIP, is a service that many providers potentially could offer. If YouTube doesn't link itself closer to enduring real-world social networks, it may not have a business in the future.

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