A Day in Paradise

Posted by mobile phone:
I am sitting in the Hyundai waiting room waiting for the first service to be completed. Since my blogging is no longer shackled to my computer, I figured this would be a good time to share my latest great idea ™ with you my faithful reader.

Before I start with what my new social networking site does let’s talk about the existing networks I am currently a member of.

Advogato: Probably the first network I joined. This site has not changed since I joined in 2003. I still enjoy reading the news there, and blog once a year.

Orcut: This bastard stepchild of google was popular right after its launch in mid 2004. It quickly got boring, although I hear it is quite the rage in india and brazil.

Flickr: While not a traditional social network, flickr has grown into a focused social networking site. Because of the great funtionality that flickr provides, everyone I know is a paid premium member. Flickr is a true social networking success story. The obvious reason is the content the site generates, as well as the community of photography enthusiasts.

Linkedin: I have been a member for the last few years but my use of the platform has only gone as far as accepting friend requests from existing friends.

Xing (formerly OpenBC): Xing is a business networking site which is most popular in Europe. For anyone doing business in Europe, a premium Xing membership is a Must. Unfortunately, since leaving germany I haven’t used it much.

Oreilly radar: Signed up, banged around a bit for 20 minutes and then forgot about it.

Livejornal: I am not sure if this one really counts as a social networking site. Livejournal is a weird beast, its a community which has grown around friends, emotion indicators and journals (not to be confused with blogs). LJ has had its moments, such as during Hurricane Katrina when lj users posted images out of the only operating ISP in New Orleans. In general LJ is pretty dull.

MySpace: MySpace is the Bart Simpson of social networks. At its core it is a very simple framework which allows its users to insert arbitrary html to change the look of the site. The result looks like the internet in 1997 on acid. Blinking lights and onload() music. Myspace is also available to children 13 years and older, and because of this they have an overwhelmingly young audience.

Facebook: Facebook is a platform built by smart people for smart people. Where MySpace chose to expand by allowing their users to modify the look of their pages by copy and pasting html code, FaceBook allows developers to modify the platform with third-party addons which they can then share with their friends. Of all the social networking platforms, facebook was the platform that I was slowest to become involved in (social networking burn-out?) But since in the last 2 months I have been very impressed with the functionality as well as the comunity that has grown up around the platform.

This is the end of part one. In part 2 I will be explaining what all these platforms are missing (and its not data export/sharing)