Luke ‘n’ Kim

is it about the money? hmm

19 December, 2007 – 8:00 pm

ok so, there is an absolute overabundance of web2.0 social networks around the place, duh…

i was asked the other day what web browser i predominantly use, i replied “flock, opera and IE” (of course), the good thing about flock is it ties four sites into your browser, which is very handy… but flock is by no means the only app doing this.

the problem with these sites

the thing is, there are always compromises… i would like to use these sites for what they do well, and then have the useful information available without actually having to go to the site to get it. problem being, i don’t pay to get access to these applications, resources or databases, so how do they pay their bills?

traffic (banner or text ads) or by dangling extra features for paying members

leaving people who care stuck in the middle… i’d just like any stream of information to have it’s own RSS feed , like for instance;

• my facebook mini-feed
• my last.fm weekly top 10 albums
• my youtube favorites
• etc

…and it’s not that it’s hard to create, especially when feeds already exist for very very similar information on the same site, i just get the impression they want you to have to visit their site.

google has a conduct page that includes the widely quoted “don’t be evil” line, i like that… but then it gets all depressing, there will never be a silver bullet, they will never all play friendly, it’s just not in their best interests is it?

then there is the networking sides of things

ahh… “friends”, “followers”, “following”, “favorite”, “shout”, “poke”, and so it goes…

sites like facebook and myspace sneak up on you a bit, all of a sudden you are “friends” with people you haven’t actually spoken (you know, out loud) to in over ten years… and maybe you weren’t planning on speaking to them again, not because there’s bad blood or anything, just because, you grew apart?

writing this here is probably going to ruin it , but as a bit of an experiment, i was thinking about writing and sending a separate, at least 100 word, meaningful and genuine email to everyone i’m “facebook friends” with… just to see how long it takes to do and maybe actually connect with these people rather, than just seeing their picture pop up whenever they challenge someone to a ninja-pirate-vampire-werewolf-jedi fight…

…to be continued…