elearnspace

In an interview earlier today, I was asked what I use for social networking services. Short answer: I try them all (facebook, myspace, bebo, orkut, linkedin, twitter, etc.) and then resume the more ad hoc mixture of blogs I’ve been using for many years. Quite simply, social networking sites require a high level of commitment. It’s like taking care of a pet or a garden. If you want to keep it in good health, it requires time, effort, and work. So while facebook/twitter/ning/etc was cool for a while, I once again find myself using my aggregator (finally made the switch to Google Reader, after vowing not to give my entire digital soul to them…Bloglines just kept failing on me) to track the thinking of people I want to follow. I don’t have the patience or time to commit to a social network service. Business Week questions whether we need completely unique social networking sites: Scaling the Social Web…and explores how many websites are now offering increased user-interaction/networking. We soon end up with a network of social networks…rather than one huge over-arching network like facebook. It also results in our identity repeated each time we join a new network or social group online. Terry Anderson states that our “capacity to engage with new applications is severely limited due to the ever consuming time pressures needed to establish a presence in every new application and domain”. A central identity management service becomes critical as our profiles are used for more and more services.