The Underscore Archives

Hi Matt,

Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 10:44:44 AM, you wrote:

> Is it just me, or does anyone else here just switch off at the  
> mention of the next social networking site?  I know a lot of you are  

Aren't most sites social in some way? :)

I wanted to try Pownce for the closed-group file sharing aspect,
nothing more really. For me that is where it is useful.

> It seems like the IM situation a few years back... now I use Adium
> (or any other meta-IM client) that communicates with all, so I don't  
> really care or even know which IM network my friends are on.

I'd wager it's a little deeper than that - you probably use Adium
because it's a truly beautiful piece of software. I bet if it was a
giant dog turd of an application (with no suitable alternative) you
would then settle on which-ever IM was the largest common denominator
used by your friends, or possibly even run a couple of them.

I think social sites are similar, right now as you said there are a
mass of them all with slightly different features. But give it a few
years, the wheat will be sorted from the chaff, and we'll see
consolidation until perhaps finally we're left with a social network
site equivalent of Adium. In the meantime we'll collect a mass of
logins across a mass of sites, or just ignore them altogether :)

Cheers,

Rich
-- 
Zend Certified Engineer
http://www.corephp.co.uk

"Never trust a computer you can't throw out of a window"