I can't breathe without my social network

picture from http://www.grooveking.com/

So what's next? Did we really expect that this was the end all, be all of social networks? Every new technology continues to evolve to the point where we look back at our brick like cell phones of the early 90's and think, "i wouldn't be caught dead carrying that now." The same holds true for social networks, someday we are going to look back and laugh at it's primitive nature back in the good old days of 2008.

According to this article, Charlene Li believes that social networks will become as ubiquitous as air. Li writes that there will be four components to the social network development: 1) Universal Identities, 2) A single social graph, 3) Social context for activities, and 4) Social influence defining marketing value.

So instead of having profiles all over the web (on our flickr accounts and on our facebook accounts and everywhere in between) we will have one identity that we can manage from one place. Instead of incomplete social networks, our friends and acquaintances will be tracked and added to our network. And so forth with the technological advances.

I think it's true that it's only a matter of time and technology before social networks become just another part of the internet that we hardly think twice about, like googling. We can no longer sit back and pretend that social networks are just the toys of the global youth, social networks will soon be the means to and/or the control of our every connection.

Who's Joining Facecbook Now?

When I began college four years ago, facebook was just coming up in the world. I remember the excitement we all felt when they added more schools and you could begin to friend your friends from home. It started growing then and it just kept going.

After a little while I found myself wondering, who created the monster? What I found so great about facebook, it was only open to college students, was suddenly desecrated by the arrival of high school students and then the city networks. Now just about anybody can join facebook, and although this may seem good to some, I think it hurts the value of facebook.

According to the article, Social Graph-iti, the value of a network increases as does the number of its users, but this theory does not apply to social networks. Social networks are not actually about connecting to everybody, everywhere, but really about connecting to the right people in the right places. This undesirable growth of social networks has caused a movement to create smaller, more exclusive social networking sites.

Dr. Karen Stephenson writes that trust is a pivotal part of social networks. The problem we begin to see with facebook and myspace is that there is a lack of trust. People are concerned about who can find their information, or what creepy stalker may be friending them next. As the network gets bigger, trust gets smaller and so does the value of the network.

Just like any brand, facebook needs to learn the value of staying true to the wants and needs of its core market. And bigger is not always better.