A while ago (about 2009 I think), when I was a freshly baked Juniorprofessor, I was joking with a colleague that it felt a bit awkward to still be part of studiVZ (a social network for students that was very populuar in Germany at that time – I think actually a Facebook clone). Being a bit smug about our new positions we thought that there should be something like profVZ for guys like us.
Not precisely in the same direction but somehow related: I heard in this post be Peter that the AMS is working on some online community for mathematicians. Go and read the post in which Peter argues why this is a great idea.
By the way: The German pendant of the AMS, the DMV, already has a default social network for all its members (I blogged on this in an earlier post). This is pretty hard to find on the DMV homepage and it seems that almost nobody is using it for anything (except the few people who contribute to the forum). If I see correctly, the DMV social network is using the JomSocial software, a community tool for Joomla! sites. It looks like JomSocial has quite some flexibility and a lot of tools available. However, I have no idea if this could be adapted in a reasonable way to the needs of a mathematical social network (whatever they are, precisely). The AMS has produced great tools already (just think of looking up papers and references in MathSciNet) and I expect that a AMS social network can be great too. However, I would prefer if such an initiative would be run by a worldwide organization, i.e. the IMU, basically just to emphasize that the social network is intended for the whole mathematics community. Anyway: I think that the mathematical community can greatly benefit from a professional social network and that this could be much more useful than the other general ones (just as MathSciNet is in general much more useful for a mathematician than Google Scholar is).
February 17, 2013 at 1:10 am
Thanks for the trackback. I agree that an international effort would be awesome, but I do understand the need to isolate and provide benefits only to a society’s members. That’s why I’d go with a federated tool like Diaspora where different “pods” (that’s what servers are called) could connect. It shouldn’t be hard to have extra features just for society members.
From futher rumors, it seems the AMS is taking this seriously (though unfortunately not in the federated direction). Question is: what are the extra benefits? An easy one would be MathJax support. But I think the key is to redefine what our societies are — from discrete to continuous connectivity, if you will.
It irks me a little that the members are not involved in determining this…
February 17, 2013 at 8:02 pm
If the AMS really provides a social network, this would be a good reason for me to join. Nice interfaces to other databases and services (e.g. arXiv, MathSciNet, maybe even mathoverflow of other stackexchange sites,…) seem to be obvious. Also possibilities for joint calenders and events should be there. Tools for online collaboration would also be great (e.g. in spirit of Mendeley). I think one could come up with a fairly long list of wishes easily…