We were hoping our foray into blogging this new year would contain original substance -- i.e. that it'd be more than a roundup of what others are currently saying -- but we can't wait for what could be another year to feel that elusive creative spark. So:
Jeremy Zawodny labels the social software nay-sayers point-missers:
Get yourself out of the mind set of social network software for the sake of social network software and start thinking about how adding a social networking component to existing systems could improve them.
It's a pretty good point, though we must admit we're pretty fickle when we don't really know what we're talking about. To wit, Richard Stokes's response seems as practical:
I have hundreds of contacts, but the value I derive from introducing people far exceeds any advantage I would gain by entering them into a system somewhere. Moreover, the value I derive from my hard-earned network is sacrified for the "good" of the system. If anyone, or even just my associates can find out everyone who I know and everything I know about them, I am no longer indispensible. What would possess me to give away my personal "competitive advantage"?
Furthermore, it takes a fair amount of actual work to get a good social network in full swing. We watched every one of our friends this summer take to Friendster feverishly, entering personal details, submitting testimonials, and creating elaborate profiles. It took about a week to get everyone interested. It took about as long for our group to abandon it. So, it's clear to us that Jeremy's on the mark:
The real value of this stuff comes from integrating it with services like Amazon.com or Google or your favorite on-line movie tickets site. Like many things on-line, it will move from novelty to utility.
If you really think that Friendster scored over $10 million in VC funding on the premise of being nothing more than a "browse your friends" site, get real.
Incidentally, Jay Allen's recent networked address book proposition is a great idea.
When I move, I update my contact information and suddenly, every one of my friends has the new information in a central place. No need for mass emails that people have to hunt to find. No more question marks next to possibly outdated phone numbers. No more bounced email because someone decided that they didn't want to use Hotmail anymore.
Go a step further now and integrate this with my email application, my local address book application (for when I am offline) and my Bluetooth enabled cellphone.
We recently changed mobile phone numbers. The current (low-tech) way to distribute this new information among friends is extremely slow and tedious. We're forced to update each friend's address book, as we see them, individually. We may not see some friends for weeks, which means it could be weeks before they get our new number. Worse, not having our new number likely exacerbates the problem by extending the time between visits.
Jay's system neatly solves this problem -- by creating a host of not-so-easy-to-allay privacy concerns. Matt Haughey's recent thoughts on social software, too, include a few great ideas challenged by seemingly insurmountable privacy and signal-to-noise concerns. We'd love to hear more thoughts on these dangers.
All this is to say that our New Year's resolutions are not, in fact, to intensify our tendencies to ramble and conjecture, despite any hint of the previous in this entry.