Post-Orkut, some thoughtful appraisal from Nova Spivack as to where we are now:
Thanks to the recent mushrooming of social networking systems, I am starting to experience a new problem that I call "social overload." Now that I am connected to the world via LinkedIn, Ryze, Plaxo, Orkut, and Typepad, as well 6 different IM systems, and several email accounts, I am finding that an increasing amount of my time is spent on "relationship maintenance" tasks like approving or declining relationship and referral requests. The fact that I am experiencing social overload is ironic because the intent of many of these systems is actually to increase the efficiency of my relationships, thereby improving my productivity. However I find that exactly the reverse is what is taking place in practice. ... As a final thought, I would like to suggest that there is no need for many different social networking systems, just as there is no need for 6 different IM systems. One would be sufficient. In fact, one would be ideal. I now participate in several different social networks, all containing many of the same people -- what is the point of that? It used to be that there were many different and incompatible e-mail systems -- now there is really just a single global e-mail infrastructure that all e-mail platforms connect to. I think we will see a similar evolution with social networks. In a conversation with Jerry Michalski yesterday we realized that we would like to see something like Jabber emerge in the realm of social networks -- an open platform for social networking applications that could provide a unified standard and a means of integrating -- instead of all these different and incompatible networks. I believe that the concept of social networking has merit and that social networking tools have the potential to be useful, but until we see added semantics, better filtering (both a technical and social problem), and the emergence of a social networking standard that enables integration across different social networking platforms, I think these services will probably lead to more "social overload" than "social efficiencies."
