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Revolutionising Sociability
The unparalleled growth of social networks in the digital world gave sociability a whole new meaning, questioning the traditional meaning often confused with extraversion. Whilst social networks used to be solely virtual, astute mobile application vendors are bringing to market applications that help mobile users connect and interact with people in close proximity.
This emerging market, called proximity-based mobile social networking, has manifested in different functionalities within social networking apps, such as dating apps. The primary filter uses geo-proximity to determine who is discoverable on the social network. By enabling users to meet new people and interact with them and their locally relevant content, proximity-based social networking applications are far more engaging.
Modes of sociability are observably changing. Face-to-face sociability has largely shifted to mobile, even in immediate geoproximity. Kids sitting next to another on a train or in a coffee shop are texting one another, rather than using verbal communication. This has led to the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism, covered in Shoshana Zuboff’s book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. This holds that tech-related sociability, captured digitally in behavioural data, is not only used to improve the user experience but also fed to the manufacturing process and “fabricated into” prediction products. In reality, these prediction products are essentially born out of user behaviour surveillance.
The unparalleled growth of social networks in the digital world gave sociability a whole new meaning, questioning the traditional meaning often confused with extraversion. Whilst social networks used to be solely virtual, astute mobile application vendors are bringing to market applications that help mobile users connect and interact with people in close proximity.
This emerging market, called proximity-based mobile social networking, has manifested in different functionalities within social networking apps, such as dating apps. The primary filter uses geo-proximity to determine who is discoverable on the social network. By enabling users to meet new people and interact with them and their locally relevant content, proximity-based social networking applications are far more engaging.
Modes of sociability are observably changing. Face-to-face sociability has largely shifted to mobile, even in immediate geoproximity. Kids sitting next to another on a train or in a coffee shop are texting one another, rather than using verbal communication. This has led to the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism, covered in Shoshana Zuboff’s book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. This holds that tech-related sociability, captured digitally in behavioural data, is not only used to improve the user experience but also fed to the manufacturing process and “fabricated into” prediction products. In reality, these prediction products are essentially born out of user behaviour surveillance.