Charleston.

Charleston.

Charleston.

Captive Social vs. Open Social

Language matters.

This post was originally posted on January 13, 2019 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the language we use to talk about social media and content creation on the web. And as I’m writing about social media — especially microblogging and the indie web movement — I feel like we need a phrase to refer to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others that try to lock in users and leverage their private data to sell more ads, compared to the other newer services with revenue models that are less interested in ad sales or lock in.

I know that we already use “indie” and “indie web” as a way to differentiate between the two approaches, but I’m not sure that meaning is clear to a broader audience.

I’m going to go with “captive social” and “open social.”

Captive Social. Social media networks and services that make money through advertising, leveraging their user’s private data. Captive social networks benefit from gathering as much data on their users as possible and using that data to sell more relevant ads to users. To be profitable, that also means that they benefit from having users spend as much time as possible engaged with their platform. Examples of captive social networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked In, Snapchat.

I think my time in the insurance industry has partially inspired this terminology. Captive insurance agents are contractually obligated to only sell products from a single vendor. But I think the term is appropriate for the relationships we have with social media platforms. We are locked into each service silo with very little interoperability between competing platforms.

Open Social. Newer social media networks that are aren’t interested in trapping your data. They benefit from interoperability and the sharing of data between services. Their profitability isn’t based on leveraging personal user data, but on the value you derive from the service.

The inspiration for the terminology isn’t open source, it’s open web standards. I was a Mac user during the years of Internet Explorer dominance — when you sometimes couldn’t access a web site if you didn’t have the right browser. The open web standards push in the early 2000’s freed us from that nightmare and led to expanded browser choice. I hope that open social can have a similar effect on social media that open web standards had on the web.

Open social does have a distinct meaning from indie web. Indie web aims to separate itself from the corporate web, but open social is not necessarily limited to only small companies and decentralized platforms. A large corporation could build an open social platform, as long as they weren’t profiting from trapping your data and locking you into their service.1 The difference isn’t the size of the provider, but instead, their goals, objectives and business models.

So here are a couple of examples of captive social and open social in context:

It’s a subtle change — a language shift that I think will help when we are having discussions with people who are concerned about privacy and the power of social media, but who aren’t comfortable hosting their sites or maintaining a server.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

  1. I recognize that the concept of an open social network from a large corporation might seem absurd in today’s environment, but you never know. ↩︎

Friday night, grad school. Classes start next week and I already have reading.

New glasses.

Many of the walking trails at Saluda Shoals are flooded.

Design + Math

Designers don’t want to admit it, but math is important to the profession.

mathmatical symbols on a green background

This post was originally posted on September 29, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

My first class in graduate school was a quantitive research class and I really enjoyed the statistics side of things. As I’ve told my designer friends this, they typically respond with something along the lines of “Ugh. I became a designer so I wouldn’t have to do math.” I’m not surprised. I’ve heard the same from designers and students over the years, but I’m increasingly irritated by it for a few reasons:

Designers use math every day. I’m not sure where the myth that designers don’t need to understand math comes from, but it’s not true. I use math pretty much every day in my work. Especially geometry and algebra. Understanding foundational mathematical concepts makes you a better designer.

It steers talent away from the field. Let’s say you’ve got a talented high school kid, who also happens to be good at — or maybe even like — math. Tell them enough times that math isn’t important for designers and they’ll find a different career path. As an honors student, I was told repeatedly through school by well-meaning adults that I didn’t want to take art classes because they weren’t rigorous enough. As a result, I initially looked at options like architecture and engineering. It took me a while to circle around to design.

It undermines the profession. The reality is that designers struggle to be taken seriously by big business. We’ve fought to get a “seat at the table” and prove our value beyond just crafting the look and feel of something. As much as we don’t like it, the “language” of business is often based in math. Ignoring the importance of math simply makes it harder to communicate with business decision makers.

I think the challenge is separating our feelings about “math class” from our feelings about “math.” I didn’t enjoy most of my high school math classes. My algebra and geometry teachers weren’t my favorites. Because I scored a high enough score on my AP Calculus test, I was able to exempt all of my college math requirements, so I haven’t taken a math class in almost 25 years. What I’ve come to realize is that while I disliked the way I was taught math, math itself is pretty amazing. And useful.

Don’t misunderstand me… I’m not expecting designers to line up and take refresher math classes. AIGA chapters aren’t going to start holding day-long math workshops. All I’m saying is that embracing the idea that math is an integral part of design only helps the profession as a whole.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

Pretty amazed the iPhone was able to pick up some of the star field. Orion’s Belt is there at the top of the frame.

S’mores.

Yes, the water was cold.

Sunset swing.

Swing.

Not my “Best Nine,” but my “Favorite Eight.” I usually do a best nine post at the end of the year, but this year I realized I’d rather post the images I loved instead of the ones that were most liked. #fav8 #bestnine2018

Aftermath

Our traditional Team Wertz on-the-stairs-before-presents picture. Ruby decided to join this year. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas from Team Wertz

Cousin LEGO time.