ChrisPosterous

Then there is LinkedIn, the step child of social networks. My contacts there started out as business contacts - people I worked with and worked for, who could share a recommendation or job idea. People I could turn to for business advice, problem solving help, and the like. LinkedIn gets this and has not tried to be the next Twitter or Facebook. My LinkedIn connections are just over a hundred of some the brightest people I have worked with. And that is perfect. I don't feel pressured or annoyed by the feature-creep. Because there is none.

Then of course there is Twitter. Not really a network. More like a big Ham Radio. When I was a kid, I used to have a shortwave radio from Radio Shack that was as big as a desktop PC. It was amazing. I had this single wire antenna that I would run from corner to corner of my room to boost reception. As a young person, there was limited listening time due to time zone, bedtime and sunspot issues. But occasionally I would get the BBC or a broadcast in another language, like German or Arabic. Sometime I would pick up a time signal, which dutifully announced the exact time from an atomic clock somewhere in Colorado with magical precision. The whole experience was amazing. Fast forward 30 years. Now my radio is Twitter. With it,  I have lots of channels I listen to when I happen to be near the "radio" - people who broadcast a link to a site they found (or article they wrote), a funny quote or thought provoking idea, or just a hello. Even some foreign language tweets from my European friends. If I don't tune in, I don't hear the message. But this doesn't bother me, because most of the people I tune into are on during "prime time" or before my bedtime if I am lucky (a lot of us are past 40 so bedtime is getting earlier and earlier), so as long as I check in now and then during those time slots, I get enough good stuff to keep coming back. Twitter is used for much more than that, but the founders are not pushing that down my throat. They keep their site simple and the toolset equally simple. Its a perfect tool in this regard. And its comfortable.

Now, Buzz and Friendfeed are fighting for my attention. These networks had the potential to be aggregators for lots of services, but what is happening with Buzz (and what already happened with Friendfeed) is that people are choosing sides and in the process creating more parallel networks instead of one connected one. Like Facebook, the original mission is lost. In its place is the attempt to create a holy grail of networks. I really don't understand this. It's counter productive and a waste of everyone's time. Tools are tools, and unfortunately we are now stuck in an internet "virtual garage" with a toolbox half full of metric and half full of American socket wrenches. And nothing fits together on the first try.

What we need right now is for someone (Google?) to step up, hand over an open platform (the actual square toolbox, not the tools inside of it) and let us bring the tools (all of which can be compatible if they follow the standard). Then and only then will the promise of social networking become reality and we can finally stop discussing social media ON social media and use it for the real work of talking to each other.