Saturated social networks
Web 2.0, mashups and social networking - it seems like it will never end. Every day I find a new platform which offers something new, something clever, and I am on a registration marathon, login-in and testing out all these new apps.
But I sense a collapse within this sudden boom; I sense it approaching silently, and rapidly. Since we are dealing with social networks, I think only a hand full will survive this boom and rise to become as good and as popular as sites such as flickr for instance. The term social network in conjunction with the ideas of Web 2.0 is hypocritical if so many varieties of networks exist without them mashing up with one and other.
The problem is that the over saturation of all these flourishing apps. won’t really create one large social network but a huge amount of scattered separate ones, creating more chaos than an organized mashups. But, do we want less and more dominant apps or does the current vast choices cater for the specific niche markets?
Labels: mashup, saturation, social netoworking, web 2.0
There
I am so glad that someone has blogged about this because its been really bothering me too.
I think that the web and its social networks seem to be mimicking real life in many ways. the world is segregated, is not one big social network and thus, neither is the web. I agree, some of these apps need to fade in to oblivion, but I am not sure if havine on major, overbearing social network is the answer.
Lets be honest, if there is one dominant social network either Google or Robert Murdoch will own/start them in the near future and who wants that!!??
I don't believe the answer lies in having one overbearing social networking system either. But business networking apps such as openBC (soon to be XING), LinkedIn, MyGenius etc. all comete with each other and are so similar. I am waiting for a convergnce so that I don't need to login all three networks seperately and have a clear overview of my 'connections'...the same can be said about IM systems: applications such as GAIM which try to converge the various IM systems just make sense...
Who's Robert Murdoch?
When Murdoch strapped MacGyver to a rocket the only difference between that scene and a typical Batman scene was that Robin was not strapped to the rocket ...