The Social Map To Where?
Earlier today, Loic Le Meur posted a visual interpretation of some of the most hyped technologies/buzz words, arguing that after flirting with all sorts of social web services, it is time to re-centralize. Oy!
The visual map created by Loic is actually quite enlightening: barring services that are repositories of my memories – Flickr (photos), YouTube (videos), GMail (messages), and some blogging tool (thoughts) – there is nothing in that list that I would miss if it went away. [Add Facebook to that list, because it kind of does bring all these various services together, in a simple-sort-of-a-way.]
Infact most of them I can live without even now. My social-professional-personal life would not be impacted a bit.Am I alone in thinking along these lines? Or there are others who fell exactly the same way? Chime in!
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Personally I think the whole social thing is maddening and is really hurting “true news” and turning good bloggers into rockstar celebrities so full of themselves as to think that people really care that they are going to the store, walking the dog, or taking a dump.
They spend time dickering on twitter when they could actually be preparing and writing stuff of substance on their blog. Personally, since twitter ad numerous clones came to the scene I have seen a real drop in the quality and relevance of the blog posts out there on the web.
All this has me really concerned on where this whole social thing is going… personally, I am fed up. I can’t wait for the rest of the socially rejected people who rely on people “friending” them to feel important to finally realize that their entire “social network” is a complete farce.
Give me some good apps that service me well and leave them at that, dont sour them with the whole social angle that gives me yet another network to keep track of.
There, I’ve vented… back to my cave.
I guess you could say that, without these websites, modern workplace as I know it would be a boring place…..
I don’t feel exactly the same. I agree that the overall social media landscape is frothy, and that with the barriers to entry falling down, we are seeing many differeny social “soup d’jours” (such as FriendFeed, SocialThing, Iminta, etc.), with a new one every week or so. That said, there is something fundamental and important happening right now, which is the emergence of the next phase of the web, the Social Web, in which who-you-are and who-you-know can make your online experience less sophomoric and trashy, and way more meaninful. No, it’s not the color wars. There is more to this whole thing, based on who you know and really care about. Recent post here: http://therealmccrea.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/centralized-me-on-the-web/
I don’t believe that the question is whether or not we can “live without” these services. Each of them adds value in a different way to different people. I say let people pick their toolbox and like Loic suggested, allow them to aggregate it where it makes most sense to them.
most of the things on that chart are recreational stuff… which i guess can be addictive at times but can always be avoided. i wonder if there is a means to elevate the social platform to handle our bare essential needs.
Hi Om:
You missed some important tools like micro blogging (twitter); RSS feed aggregators (netvibes, google reader). I agree with you on some of the other tools which you can live without. Regardless of whether you like some tool or not, the bigger question is- Don’t you want some kind of unified aggregation of these tools. I mean a Unified interface for My Social-Personal-Professional interface. So Om, what’s your opinion about social data portability, Do u think this is just media eyewash or this will someday become a reality.
Cheers,
Omfut
In my case, Its going to be more or less the same things you listed.
Gmail, Flickr, Blogger(Blogs), Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader. Add in gTalk which keeps me connected.
Rest all – well, everything else can shutdown for me because feeds are there which I subscribe to ;-)
Om, I feel like the best answer to questions like the one you pose comes from all the people out there who have never heard of GigaOm. Short answer – no, you’re not alone at all.
“.. Ideally, anyuser would like to keep all his important belonging at one place where trust and faith stays. This is against the philosophy and elderly advise “never keep all the eggs in one basket” but if it can be tightly protected and integarted … what is the harm?
My trust in Google services has been nothing less than Sun and Star. But a million Euro question … Can Google ever fill in the space… and in time?..”
i do not use any of them. but if they went away, the parts of the internet i do use would then be flash mobbed by the folk who currently use these toys. so i hope they stay!