Social Networking

Social networking is laboring under the inescapable weight of the dot-com curse: you have to find the money. No matter how cool your idea is, it's dead on arrival without an actual business plan.

At least, that's the theory. If that's true, though, why has blogging, which seems like a neat idea dependent on interest but without a concrete revenue stream, managed to not just thrive, but really dominate the Web?

How is it that free instant messengers are as indispensable as any search engine? Is it really true that free services can't be effective business plans? Or is it possible that social networking isn't really that tenable an idea after all?

I've gotten a lot of invitations to Friendster over these few years, which, to be honest, I ignored. I always just assumed I didn't have time for that tomfoolery. And I already had friends. I know that all sounds horribly snobby, but there it is.

Therein, I think, lies one of the five problems I've identified with social networking, and a good segue into my list.

1. There's nothing to do there
As Business points out, a simple destination site won't cut it. My big beef with Friendster was always, "Well, what would I do there?" Visiting most social networking sites is akin to getting invited to a party where all the cool kids are going, then showing up and finding out there's no food, no drinks, no band, no games, no pool, nothing. Just a bunch of painful small talk and leering grins. The people-watching can hold your interest for only so long.

2. It takes too much time
Yes, I know I can choose where to devote my time, but Friendster is interesting but less information rich than news sites, blogs, Google news, or any of the other sites I could visit on the Web. It's interesting, for example, to blog about the experiences I had on a given day, but it's tedious to make sure my personal stats, favorite books, and current reading list are up-to-date. One of the reasons I think personal blogs win out over social networking is that they're inherently more personal, more inwardly focused, and a better chance to show more than a snapshot of yourself.

3. Traffic alone isn't enough
The reality of the new Web is that traffic alone just doesn't cut it. You can get all the visitors you want to your site, but you can't just blanket the thing with ads and hope to survive. Advertisers today are a more sophisticated bunch, and they're looking to send targeted, rich-content messages. That means that reliance on a generalized supply of banner ads is not a sustainable model, because no matter how much data you collect about your audience, if the audience isn't specific, the ads can't be, either.

4. Strangers kind of suck (or, put nicely, the social hierarchy is really not that attractive)
Speaking of elitism, getting to know people is, frankly, a less attractive proposal than it first seems. Sure, business networking is valuable, and it's great to have a lot of resources who might know someone who can help you with...something. But that argument gets a little thin when you're suddenly bombarded with date offers or all-too-frequent postings about the unsavory or just plain uninteresting habits of the strangers you suddenly know.

Moreover, social networking sites pretty quickly and inevitably degenerate into cliques. That's normal, it happens on the blogosphere, and it's not really even that deplorable. It's just kind of tiresome on a daily basis. If you restrict your friends list to only the people you already know, well, then the boredom sets in.

5. We already have the Internet
The only lasting argument about social networking that's ever made sense is that these networks are a valuable resource if you're adrift in the sea of online information. You can, in just a few hops, get to someone who knows someone or knows something that you need to know. But the argument's a little thin in a world where search is the king of the hill. If I need information online, I can find it. And I can probably find it faster using Google than I can by e-mailing one friend who'll e-mail another who'll e-mail another while my deadline slips away. Sure, it's helpful--once in a while. But once I have all these folks in my address book, I won't be much help in terms of ad impressions.

So till my next post ya, its bye from Ganz.