The Social Networking Utility
Social networking is great, but let’s get to the part when it isn’t…
Chris Brogan has an interesting response to an article in the Economist, where they lament the “walled gardens” that social networks are today, but look forward to the day that those walls come down, like Compuserve’s and AOL’s did in the 90’s. Chris goes on to say how social networking features are toilets - that probably needs some further explanation:
Future social networks, or rather those features we currently assign to the idea of ?social networks,? will be like toilets. Today, if you rent a hotel room in the US, you expect a few things: a bed, maybe a TV, a desk, a chair, a few coat hangers, and a bathroom complete with a shower/tub and a toilet.
It could be the sexiest hotel room in the world, but without a toilet? Nothing. Just a non-starter.
Very good thinking and I think that he is dead on. There was discussion about this at the Austin Tweetup on Thursday, and today’s Austin Jelly - when are we going to get past the point where social networking is something worth talking about in and of itself, and when will it become ubiquitous? We need to move past the “Hey Mom, look at me, I am Twittering” stage and get to where everyone, not just the early adopters, are using social networking as a way to enable, enhance, and facilitate their day to day interactions and lives - where it becomes essential.
Think about it like electricity, a lot of people in the world don’t have it, and a lot of them don’t need it or want it. As electricity utilities were just forming and spreading throughout the country, people that never had it started to depend on it as it became a fixture in their everyday lives and thus, it became a necessity. Electricity service was expected, just like how Chris says that the “features we currently assign to the idea of ’social networks,’” will become a part of everything that we do - like toilets.
I think that this also comes back to the idea of social networking needing to become a means to an end, not the end in and of itself - it is the medium, not the media - an idea discussed on this post from last week and in the comments.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I have another anology, but I couldn’t mix the metaphor. : ) Stay tuned for that, because your electricity idea is a similar but different abstraction.
I think this is one of those invisible memes.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:02 am
[...] Use Social Networks? Apr.05, 2008 in discussions, social networking I’ve written about the utility of social networking services like Facebook before, and Chris Brogan offers (yet another) interesting take on why we use [...]