The first one is serious,
from TeledyN:
And yes, I do think [social networking services] will fail, it's inevitable. Whether by intentional design or by blind emulations, these new black-book stop-shops all share several dubious characteristics:
* they are not social networks, only flat-taxonomy directories of questionaire replies, and badly designed questionaires at that.
* because they do not interoperate, because they cannot share data or interchange or allow identity migrations, they are essentially anti social, building protectionist walls around people (called 'clubs' or 'communities' but really meaning the opposite)
* they don't work.
So why don't they work? Because they are _not_ social networks.
A social network is a network with a social cause, a social reason for being. Social networks fill a niche need for interaction. Church clubs, business clubs, square-dance clubs, these form natural, anthropologically sound social networks with the intelligent self-organization moving from the local (chapter) out to the regional and then clustering still beyond. They are also self-governing, electing their executives from grassroots, organizing on the need to expand the social network.
Read the whole thing.
The second is a funny
post from Jason Kottke on craigslistPermanent full-time position for a personal social coordinator for a New York-based web designer.
Your primary responsibility will be managing my accounts with various online social networking sites including, but not limited to, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, Orkut, Ryze, Spoke, ZeroDegrees, Ecademy, RealContacts, Ringo, MySpace, Yafro, EveryonesConnected, Friendzy, FriendSurfer, Tickle, Evite, Plaxo, Squiby, and WhizSpark.
Specific duties include:
- approving or rejecting invitations of friendship
- managing a database of usernames and passwords for each of the social networking sites
- sending out friendship invitations [...]
1. Michael on January 28, 2004 5:13 PM writes...
I too have trouble tracking all the social software out there. For the upcoming Etech Participant Sessions, I suggested the following:
"Staying in touch" With the plethora of social software on the net, how do people deal with maintaining relationships and contact with others in a world that consists of email, IM, IRC, weblogs, message boards, wiki, MMORPGs, Friendster, Tribe.net, blogrolls, etc. ? Do others have trouble keeping in touch with the various people & communities. What works for you? Is unified personal relationship management possible via syndicated feeds? Intelligent agents to monitor across platforms? I suggest we share ideas and 'best practices' in an open discussion.
If you are going to Etech, check out:
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2. Zbigniew Lukasiak on January 29, 2004 6:00 AM writes...
Social Networking Software is only a part of Social Software. Social Software is not a new concept, beside the name, but has a long history of email, blogs, groupware, online fora, wikis etc. With explicite Social Networking Services it reached some critical mass and suddenly its utility become obvious to everyone. The interesting thing is how this made people think that it is Social Networking that has all the value - but this is only the ilusion caused by the accident that Social Networking was added to the mass just reaching the critical value.
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