[Sigia-l] SIG-IA group on Facebook - do or die?

[James Aylett]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2007 at 08:17:27PM +1000, Andrew Boyd wrote:

> I am coming to think that no social networking app is THE ONE. I think
> that there is a blend that make up an acceptable solution between them
> - here is the scary thought of the day: what if there is no one great
> social networking site/application/utility/format to rule them all?

Then we might be able to get some work done with them? ;-)

The 'social networks' that are displaying real longevity seem to be
the ones that focus on a specific task, and use SN features to make
that more effective. Think Flickr. If this is true (and to me it makes
sense, in the same way that you would probably choose a company that
specialised in repairing cameras over one that claimed to repair
anything), then a whole load of sites are going to make up your
complete social experience on the web/internet (noting that some have
non-web access mechanisms).

The trick being to make it easy to extend your social interaction onto
yet another system. Of course, this is what the Portable SN fuss is
about. Most of that's been discussion (some of it gloriously
complicated), but it would be amazing if the next generation of
systems, and the next versions of many of the current ones, won't find
a good way of doing this. (Facebook et al have already taken a
privacy-horrifying swing at it with the
import-your-contacts-by-giving-us-your-passwords features.)

James

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  James Aylett                                                  xapian.org
  james at tartarus.org                               uncertaintydivision.org