Further highlighting the affect of anti-social social networks online or off. When the social networking craze settles, I think that the online social scene, for most, will be much smaller with limited connections. Until then... it looks like marketers and such will continue to take advantage of the situation.

how true...

You made my day!
I'm always frustrated from facebook and the whole lot of "friends" that I collected there over time.

Ah, how true. The sadness and the pure annoyance that's the so-called 'social' networks...I've been contemplating erasing myself off facebook, before it's getting too gluey...should I? ;o)

I'll add "my boss" in the outside of social network, emphasizing on the fact I wouldn't like him to know the huge amount of time I spend to social networking

i am with professional networks where it is not important if u know any person or not, the most important is if u have something to share or get from someone working in the same sector ...
so personal qualities are to be ignored ... no obsessed persons, no Viagra and no spies .... Social relations can only be made directly and not on the net

Bilal: Maybe true for linkedin, xing and so. but false fot myspace, facebook,....

Actually no – social relations can be made over the net. I think a lot of my friend here , I have never met, but they are all still friends. I Care a lot for them. So does online friends differ from real world friends ?? I don't think so.

However, what is happening in the social network is a that-- there are the dubious folks who leverage the network to sustain their worst practices. (bad marketing /spam etc etc!!)

Social networks have a commonalties- passion, sharing, experience and relationships; form out the social network.

The human species is moving towards a digital metaverse(s) , and they are creating wealth, in terms of knowledge via sharing methods. Methods may vary from network to network, but the root premise is the same. exchange of ideas and experience and having passion to do just that.

I have to agree with peter here. Like arhat happened yesterday Philip p , and I've never met you before!!! However, this is, once again a work of Genius!

Wow! this is unbelievable!

Haha brilliant!

:) nice one
many more blobs can be added to this

It is not SOCIAL network ;)
http://lzzr.com/social-networks/online-communities-notes-on-terminology/

You forgot one case: The person you know pretty well, contact frequently and is a member of your "friends list" in the social network program.

I know this is a highly speculative case (certainly doesn't exist in my experience). Maybe you could represent it as a very tiny circle.

I also want to add (and I'll probably blog about it as well) that I do think there is a use for this stuff. If you've ever posted any sort of resume online (and I have) you may have given away more information than you would on one of these social networks.

It would make sense to have a central place to post (for example) a complete resume, including all sorts of personal details (name address phone number) but only have that information available to a select few, for example with a key that can be reset as in your Google photo albums. No need for this information to even be available to your "friends" list.

I have at times submitted resumes without full contact information, or without salary history, or without a previous employment history at all.

Can the interface be made simple enough to use, and yet allow for all these variations (and more)? If so, it would be a great alternative to keeping track of all the variations with Word documents, PDFs, etc. Updating a field, like your phone number, would be a one step process, and only those with "need to know" would ever see this information.

Unfortunately I don't think any of the existing "Social" sites approach this seriously (especially Facebook, which makes a lot of claims in this area).

macbeach,

I described the kind of system you are talking about here: http://blog.libranlover.net/2007/05/contacts-management-system.html

But I approached it from the angle of a contacts management system, rather than a social network system. But then, a contact management system as described above can be the core engine of a social network.

It amazes me that nobody has still build a contact management system such as the one I have described above.

Cheers,
LL

I've been thinking about this for weeks and finally wrote it up, thanks to the reminder from Philipp's graphic.

http://blog.macb.net/2007/12/your-social-network_28.html

My main thinking was this stack of business cards that I have. I really don't want to buy a special device to scan them into what would be a tedious Windows application to maintain. I want the data online, and I already have a scanner.

Then I got to thinking about my own need for a business card every now and then. Print a thousand and they are out of date before you use a quarter of them. But print a few (from an automated online source) and not only do you save the wasted box of cards, but each card could have a key that would link the holder to the up-to-date info.

Like you said it baffles me that it hasn't already been done. How about we split the royalty check when Google (or someone) decides to "do the right thing" after implementing this?

For now, I'm going to scan my business car collection and just save them in Picasa. Even with no search mechanism they will me easier to page through than flip through by hand. And I can always OCR them from there later.

Sad, so very sad. I wonder if those social networks are even worth the trouble (and worth looking all those extra-annoying ads that pop out of nowhere)...

Hope this is alright :)
http://thebillmac3.googlepages.com/social_cia.gif
SOCIAL = Secret Observation by CIA (lol)

LOL. Very nice.

Bill Mac:
hope there is a guaranty such it stay always wrong for google services :(

> hope there is a guaranty such it stay
> always wrong for google services :(

Unfortunately the only guarantee given by Google is that they share "personal information with other companies or individuals outside of Google" when they want to "satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or *enforceable governmental request*" (quoting the Google privacy policy at http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html , my emphasis).

Curious how often they did in the past? Well, there's this bit, as an example...

<<Q: How many subpoenas for server log data does Google receive each year? A: As a matter of policy, we don’t provide specifics on law enforcement requests to Google.>>
- Log Retention FAQ by Google [PDF] http://64.233.179.110/blog_resources/google_log_retention_policy_faq.pdf

... which may be related to this bit ...

<<The National Security Letter (NSL) section of the USA Patriot Act contains a gag provision that prohibits anyone who receives an NSL from "disclos[ing] to any person that the [FBI] has sought or obtained access to information or records.">>
- American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/patriot/18490res20040819.html

The popularity of social networking is only going to grow. The ability to connect with like-minded people is a great help and support to many people.

Next year will be about niche social networking and hyper-targeting. There's websites like findasocialnetwork.com that help users find niche social networks while helping these sites promote themselves and attract users and advertisers. [Edit-Removed Link-Nate]

Even though I laughed during reading it, I also can't stop nodding, because it's just the way it really is – tragic...

Hello, here is your social network translated into French, thanks again ;)
: http://www.palpitt.fr/blog/index.php?post/2008/01/03/Ton-reseau-social-en-ligne

Social networking is personal for me! I don't want random people knowing what I listen to (http://last.fm), knowing about who I am connected with (http://linkedin.com), being a voyeur into my life (http://facebook.com) and definitely only allow a few people Im close to wake me up (http://sleep.fm).

Guess, I am anomaly in regards to social networking, but I think as you get in your later 20s your use of social networking changes.. at least for me it has

[Links fixed – Tony]