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The Future of Social Networks - Communication
featured.gigaom.com — "There is another critical aspect of social networking, however, that I have not yet addressed … and it’s one that will serve as the anchor component for social networks as they begin to enter their next stage of evolutionary development. The component I’m referring to is the communications layer embedded within social networks."
kevinrose- 459 diggs
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- attila, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3When I read articles like this, part of me is intrigued by the explosion recently of social-networking sites and the buzz surrounding them. Another part of me is somewhat surprised that people are just now realizing these sites for what they are, as social-networking websites are hardly anything new.
As far as 'communication' goes on social websites, I think of deviantART.com first and foremost. deviantART is an online community for artists and art appreciators that was founded in 2000. When the site first launched the extent of interactivity was the ability to comment on artwork you wanted to voice your thoughts on as well as the artist on their personal userpages. It expanded to include a highly-trafficked forum, the ability to add users to a 'buddy list', recent-activity tracking, and more recently, deviantART developed inhouse, an online chat networked (http://chat.deviantart.com) -- To me, this is pretty substantial and inline with everything social-networking oriented.
So, when I read, 'the future of social networking' will focus on communication, I kind of wonder the extend of exposure these people have had in exploring social-networking communities online other than YouTube and Myspace. Disclosure: I’m proud to be a "Senior Member" (Former Core Staff) of deviantART since 2000 and until 2004, the Asst. Marketing Director.- arunforce, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3(Kevin Rose fanboy placeholder)
- phlux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I totally agree with your sentiments. There seems to be this new group of people that have only recently come-of-age on the web and they have no historical context.
Of course communication and interaction is where we are going. We arent seeing new things in the concepts of communication - we are seeing new things in the areas of ease of deployment.
Web 2.0 as I have repeated constantly is about user generated content, user control over presentation, and pervasive feedback.
the current crop of utilities, applications and languages enable humans to do what they always do much more widely and much more rapidly - communicate.
The web, and computers as a whole have simply had *communication of information* as their very foundation since inception.
Originally designed to be able to grapple and communicate very complex data sets (ballistic trajectory) its just the natural evolution of systems to now be truely ubiquitous and reaching all the common man.
The next revolution isnt in social communication - we are just laying a foundation with social sites - but in meme visualization on an almost real-time scale.
with youtube assimilated, and with all the press (and investment) social sites are receiving - we are almost at a tipping point.
The next wave is in UI - and ultra meta-mashups.
Mashups that really do nothing but provide great accessibility to information previously uncorrolated or connected.
We see the basis of these now, but real visual data manipulation is right around the corner. - Yorn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
Social networking sites are just multiplayer blogs.
When these kids go to college, they'll leave MySpace and move to Facebook. Once they've left and got a job they won't be social networking anywhere but inside the company. If you want to invest in the future, just make a corporate social networking site. Facebook is about the only site I know of that is getting this. MySpace is still stuck in a LiveJournal-type do-anything diary phase.
I doubt even corporations will enjoy having Facebook-type access, however. It's just another way for companies to steal employees. Oh, your salary is 35-45k? We'll give you 45-55k! At what point in history has the business world been ok with hosting employee's resumes? Some colleges even complain about hosting professor's vitaes! - phlux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://linkedin.com
Corporate social networking site - founded by a friend of Jon Abrahams (Friendster)
TONS of people on there... and I hear they just turned profitable.
- Queso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I find this all very interesting because we are starting to build a community around the Web 2.0 Show (http://www.web20show.com/) using Rick Oslen's Beast forum (http://forum.steelpixel.com) software. It is amazing how great forum software can be when you strip all the crap out and just focus on communication between people. If you want to see a great communication package, I would definately check it out.
- attila, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1On Digg, paranthesis eat links.. I found out the hard way in the comment above yours. Anyway, I checked out your site.. the forum looks very rudimentary, basic.. but I'm assuming functional and suits your needs and those of your community.
- JavertHolmes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Who wants to play through a wall of video messages? Video messages are not browsable. You can't skim a video message unless the thing you're looking for is visual versus aural.
How do you go back on a back-and-forth conversation of video messages, trying to find that key phrase that a friend/enemy used?
Video messages use up incredible amounts of expensive bandwidth versus text. If you don't believe me, look for figures on how much Youtube throws down the drain monthly. Hell, even text-based sites have to throw up ads everywhere just to pay the bill.- grah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1'Video messages are not browsable. You can't skim a video message unless the thing you're looking for is visual versus aural.'
It won't be long until we can search through videos by matching keywords to speech in the video.
- grah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1'Video messages are not browsable. You can't skim a video message unless the thing you're looking for is visual versus aural.'
- ethicalhacker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1No kidding... why'd it take so long?
- jonathono2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Somebody turned me on to this (grapheety.com) it doesn't seem to have all the bugs worked out yet but it seems to be a really cool idea.
- heysuburbia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1geotagging on flickr is 100x better than that site.
- gavinpquinn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is significantly different than geotagging. Geotagging gives a latitude/longitude reference for a picture. Thats great.
Grapheety is giving a picture to a latitude/longitude. There is one map, and as it builds, it gives teh world a reference for what exists on that location.
- leahculver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Check out the "orangeboard" on member pages on Instructables (http://www.instructables.com). See how you can easily add photos and files to people's orangeboards/walls? If you're clever, you can figure out how to add video and hyperlinks as well.
Videos, links, photos and files are also allowed in Instructable comments. Sadly, it seems this hasn't impacted the way members communicate. Still, feel free to put a video on my orangeboard (http://www.instructables.com/member/leahculver asdf) ... - decemberfall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can't read it, everytime i open it, it severly crashes firefox... anyone else have this problem?
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