A Canadian Spin on Academic Networking

Wired Campus tells us about Yaffle, a Canadian service (the name is Newfoundlandian for an armload) that is a research-oriented social networking tool.  While it doesn’t have the graphical interface of Academia.edu (a similar service founded out of Oxford, England that includes papers),  an advantage of Yaffle is that it also lists research opportunities.  This function does seem to be Canada-specific (if I’m wrong, please let me know), but could be an effective means of spreading the word.  I say could because it’s not clear that there are enough members on the service (the same goes for Academia.edu) to be nearly as effective as broader services like Facebook (which started as an all-university service) or LinkedIn.

And that may be why these services won’t be quite as expansive or thorough as you might think they are (or will be).  While academics are conducted leading-edge research, it’s not necessarily the case that they will be leading edge technology users.  Online education has been pretty slow in spreading, lecture-centric classes are still pretty common, and other innovations in the broader world take time to infiltrate universities.  Since social networking is particularly dependent on the contributions of its users, the slowness of adoption will be more keenly felt.  This doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try to develop or use services like Yaffle, but it does mean that quick takeoffs and viral spread are less likely to happen.