Social Web Built on Narcissism?

The great paradox of "social networking" is that it uses narcissism as the glue for "community." -Nicholas Carr

In March Nicholas Carr posted a humorous post on the topic of Twitter, the online service that allows you to text your every minute thought or action to all your friends. In it, he wrote the above quote. The social web is all about community, but strangely enough – at its core seems to be narcissism. Twitter is all about “What are you doing?”, right? (Note, I don’t think Twitter is bad, I think it has some uses.)

The social web is letting people expose themselves like no other services in the history of the world. And, people are participating in large numbers. 

You can tell other people all about yourself in new ways:

• All your thoughts on Typepad or Blogger.
• All about yourself on mySpace
• All your photos on flickr
• All your thoughts moment to moment on Twitter
• Where you are all the time on Plazes
• Put videos of yourself on YouTube

But, are people sharing in order to edify the larger group – or are they sharing in order to say “look at me”?

This leads me into a new study that shows that today’s college students are very narcissistic.

Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could harm personal relationships and American society.

…
Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop today in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" and "I can live my life any way I want to."

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

Think you're 'special'? That's not necessarily a good thing.

So, could part of the success of the new “social” web be based on the fact that it has a booming narcissistic market to use its services?  If this is accurate, then entrepreneurs should look at their new social web services not as how they can serve the group – but how the service can promote the individual to others in the group.

Please note that I am not saying that self-promotion is always bad. Actually it is a natural part of life and success, especially when it comes to business. mySpace started getting popular when bands used it to promote themselves. The community took off, but the growth was facilitated in the early days by people promoting themselves. LinkedIn has an element of self–promotion as well as community. So, maybe we should think about the features that benefit the individual first, then the group features second. Future markets for social web services may be better identified by looking for people who want or need to promote themselves.