Social Networking - Required Reading

Social networking. We've all heard about it, and we know that Facebook is the dominant player. But what does it mean? And what does the future of social networking look like?

For some thoughts on this, consider this article from TechCrunch:
"Social Networking: The Future" by Mark Suster
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/05/social-networking-future/

Note that the article is the third in a three part series, where the previous two parts (linked in the third part) discussed the past and present of social networking.

Without going into a lot of detail about the past and present (the future is what I really care about), the article on social networking's past had some great points that remind us that, as always, "sub sole nihil novi est." Most interesting was looking back on AOL. The article says it best:

"And then came AOL. ... It became the onramp for newbies. The funny thing about AOL is that while you dialed up to the Internet, the goal of AOL was to keep you locked into their proprietary content and thus earned the classification of 'walled garden' because they kept you inside AOL. They had a proprietary browser, their own search engine, their own content, chat rooms, email system, etc."

Does this remind you of any companies nowadays? It should...

"As I like to say, my Mom would call me proudly and say, 'Honey, I’m on the Internet!' And I’d say sardonically, 'no, Mom, you’re not on the Internet. You’re on AOL!' I don’t think she really understood the difference. AOL was controlled by one company and the Internet was distributed. AOL controlled the services, taxed companies to access users and decided what was good or bad. AOL was closed, the Internet was open."

Replace the word "AOL" with, say, your popular social networking site and see if the analogy works for you. Maybe not quite yet but where they're headed...

Suster continues:

"When Time Warner & AOL merged it was widely feared that this would be a monopoly that would control the Internet. Ha.

"As I write these words I’m aware that I could practically change the words AOL and Facebook for much of this section and with a few factual tweaks it might not be noticeable to the reader who I was talking about. More on that later."

I wrote my commentary above before I read this paragraph. If you didn't make the same connection earlier, before you read this last paragraph, you've not been paying attention.


Okay, back to the future. :) Suster makes the following points about the future of social networking.

"Ultimately I don’t believe users or society as a whole will accept a single company 'locking in' our vital information. ... Facebook will succumb to pressure and over time make this available to us ... Either they make our social graph portable or we’ll find other networks to join."

"Since 2006 I have been lamenting what I see as 'the Facebook problem' – they are trying to lump me into one big social network. Nobody exists in one social network. I have the one with my friends where I want to talk about how wasted we were at the party last weekend that I don’t want to share with my family network where I share pictures of the kids with my parents and siblings. I don’t want either of these mixed with the business social network in which I want to maintain the appearance that I’m 'all business' ... Facebook has jumbled these all together and then tried to bandage it by making groups available."

"And young people aren’t stupid ... To get around all of this jumbling of social graphs they simply create multiple Facebook accounts under pseudonyms or 'nom du guerre' for their real discussions and more pristine Facebook accounts for their real names. I wonder how many of Facebook’s 500 million users are created for this purpose? I’ve confirmed this trend with several young people."

"If I were Facebook I would have simply created two places where you could network, Facebook 'private' and Facebook 'open.' The latter product could have competed directly with Twitter and could have had an asymmetric follow model. ... if they would have done it this way they never would have crossed the ethical lines that they did and we could all just love Facebook instead of our love-hate relationships."

"As our social graph becomes more portable I believe that social networking will become a feature in everything we do. You can already see it slipping into services like Pandora where my social graph instantly appears and my friends’ musical tastes are displayed without my knowing this would happen. On NY Times I’m getting recommended articles by friends and I didn’t explicitly turn this feature on. This trend of social pervasiveness will continue."

"One thing that is obvious to me is that while many websites want to have Facebook Connect log-ins to know more about you, they don’t really know what to do with you once they have that information."

"I know that in 2010 it seems ridiculous to say anything other than 'Facebook has won—the war is over' and I know that it feels that way right now. Facebook is so dominant it is astounding. In a complete return to where we all began with AOL—the world is 'closed' again as Facebook has become this generation’s walled garden. When you’re on Facebook you’re not on the Internet—you’re on the InterNOT."

"It is no doubt that the next decade belongs to Facebook. But the coincidence is that 10 years out will be 2020 and when we look back from that date I’m certain that people will also find a Facebook monopoly a bit laughable."