The primary aim of a social networking site should be to satisfy of its members. Members do not control such sites; their wants are often slow to be fulfilled or unpopular features introduced.
Facebook fails to have a network for my urban area. If I want to join a geographic network, I have to join that of an urban area, Newcastle, approximately 40 miles away. A Facebook group with nearly 10,000 members exists that lobbies for my area to be made a network exists, but has it been done? No.
Other websites, like MySpace, fail to keep in touch with their users’ needs too. MySpace suffers from featuritis, having introduced pointless services like ‘MySpace Karaoke’ and allowing customisation to such an extent that makes the site inaccessible and inefficient.
Members need a big say in how social networking are operated.
Simply stating that if a site fails to meet the needs of its users, that they will stop using that site, is not a satisfactory solution. These sites are primarily a community comprising smaller communities (social networks), and if users leave for other sites, these communities are torn apart and social networking becomes even more time-consuming, as users must use several sites.
The solution? Co-operation: ‘an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise’.
If members owned the service they use, they could use their democratic voice to get features they want and to ensure that a positive user experience is maintained.
The securing of initial capital obviously proves a problem. However, if each member had to pay an amount – whether £1, £2 or £10 – for a share (and say in the site’s future), this could raise it. This might work especially well for niche social networks, as people willing to contribute to the site’s initial capital could be quickly identified and targeted. Niche networks have been known to rapidly grow. For example, Facebook was originally for students at Harvard and within one month, over half of that university’s undergraduate population had joined(see this article).
Paying for the upkeep of the site could be a problem too, but member-owners would be able to choose which revenue model they preferred. If the members were willing to pay to subscribe, they could democratically indicate their desire to do so. If members would rather face advertisements, they could democratically choose to do that. At the moment, if social networking sites were to make this decision, it would be somewhat experimental as they could not truly know what their members desired. Consequently, some sites use intrusive adverts, whilst others charge for membership in situations where it is inappropriate.
Of course, some social networking sites are already semi-democratic. Facebook had a ‘Site Governance Vote’ in April 2009, but this was only about changes to the terms of service (something I suspect most members aren’t faintly interested about). This vote was effectively useless. For it to be binding, it needed a 30% turnout. It achieved roughly 3%. Privacy International described it as a ‘massive confidence trick’. In a way, it was important topic on which to vote, but members should be able to vote on issues important to them, not just topics on which the company wants them to vote.
Social networking sites are communities, not just companies. A community should be democratically-controlled in order to ensure its needs are best met and that it can grow in a sustainable and responsible fashion, rather than a fashion in which the main aim is generating higher profits.
