I hate the term social networking as it applies to business communities. It may make sense to call these technologies social networking if you're referring to the early applications in places like Myspace, Facebook, and even Linkedin.
I heard a speech recently from the CTO of Linked In and I liked the humorous metaphor he used to describe the three big social networking sites. Myspace is the bar, Facebook is the backyard barbeque and Linked In is the office water cooler. I think it accurately describes at least the original purpose of these social networks.
But now we have the capacity to use technology created out of social networking to address shared concerns across multiple audiences and groups of people. Social networking won't replace the human need to get together face to face with others. Rather, social networking technologies augment and extend interactions, providing more value for participants than a stand-alone meeting would.
Joe, you're not alone... I'm also tired of uttering the umbrella term but I'm afraid it's a necessary evil when you're in the business of evangelizing. Shifting labels before marketers have adopted and penetrated the space is tough as it leads to a whole other breed of jargon fatigue.
As the space fragments and adds new spins like the ones you mention (water cooler, bbq, bar etc.), the majority of the "visible web" will replace itself with a new generation of interactive communities and at that point, we may simply revert back to calling them "sites" or better yet, by their individual names.
Posted by SoniaC on October 22, 2008 at 07:24 PM PDT #
Wow, it makes my social life seem so much more exciting to think I have been to the bar, a barbeque and the watercooler all in one day! :-) In all seriousness, its interesting to me that we segment ourselves into these different groups and the different personas we take on in each of them. Our private lives have become more public and our lives are integrating in ways we never thought possible.
Posted by Ambrec on October 24, 2008 at 11:41 AM PDT #
The real problem with the current social networking sites is that they are data silos. The solution to this cannot come from the current Web 2.0 world though. One has to step out of the web of documents and into the web of data as I show in this presentation
http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/building_secure_and_distributed_social
Posted by Henry Story on October 29, 2008 at 09:01 AM PDT #