Yeah. Back in the day, Facebook's reaction to very successful groups like Un millón de voces contra las FARC and One Million Strong for Obama) was a great example of this: they reworked group functionality to make it a much less effective organizing platform. Similarly tThe Get FISA Right organizing on my.barackobama.com (using the platform to challenge Obama's postiion) was so threatening that it was part of the reason they shut the whole platform down after he was elected.
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Facebook was not a social network at that time (if it ever was that), it was a social media. Like I said, the network is the Important part. Media can be done by other means.
@jdp23 @futurebird
To the contrary! At least in the US, Facebook was very much seen as a social network site at the time, both in terms of how people talked about it and academically (boyd and Ellison's Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship (2007) lists MySpace and Facebook is their two first examples of social network sites)
At the 2008 Computers Freedom and Privacy conference -- which was just before Get FISA Right -- Clay Shirky and I got into a debate about the organizing possibilities of Facebook and other social networks. I was optimistic, based on experiences in One Million Strong ... he on the other hand thought that Facebook would close it down fairly quickly. Much as it pains me to admit it, he was right. Dammit.
(That said I think the organizing possibilities are still there. Unfortunately in general it's been the far-right that's capitalized on it rather than progressives but that's another strory.)
That's the time when the public terminology was developing. It had been called SNS for some time, but the companies needed to restate themselves as Media to capture the ad budgets. News Feed replaced profiles as the main interface in 2006. I can't remember exactly when alogorithmic sorting replaced chronological order, but Sponsored Stories came in 2011, and latest by that time it wasn't a Network but Media.
@jdp23 @futurebird
Within the industry, none of us were very happy with the Social Network term. It was vague, hard to define, and certainly didn't communicate that advertisers could spend their budgets with us to reach people, even though they could.
(I was not at Facebook, and left the industry in 2011)
@jdp23 @futurebird
Good perspectives as always, thanks! Agreed that the person-to-person social networking aspects have been steadily de-emphasized over time in favor of a more media-focused (and ad-friendly!) approach -- although they're still there.
The framing I remember from the time was that social media was the general category, including social network sites as well as other options. Classic blogs, message forums, media sites with comments, chat rooms -- places where you can't follow other people -- are all examples of social media that isn't a social network site. Of course the people using those technologies are part of social networks, and so are people who aren't even online, so "sites" is load-bearing in that definition! Edelman's The Social Pulpit, from 2009, is an interesting look at how the Obama campaign used social media in general, and social network sites in particular (although leaves out the "sites", sigh).
Terminlology and timing details aside, though, I very much agree with your point that we'd be better off if the focus shifted more to social networks and communities. This to me is what's really important and valuable about fedi -- or about community-oriented stuff in the ATmosphere like Blacksky; it's the community focus that matters, not the protocol!
And I also agree with @futurebird's point about the importance of social media in terms of it being the news and information distribution system of our world. One of the things I really like about the work @MediaRevolution is doing with #MediaLiberationDay is that it's part of a general focus on media as a whole -- and talk about exploring decentralised social networks as part of that.
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