Social Network Mayhem
Scenario: You spin up your browser and search for someone on the Internet. Some of you load up Google – others choose Yahoo – and yet some of you surf to social sites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Tagged, Reunion, Classmates and (catch my breath), and so on. Irregardless of where you search, what happens next is the same: You get slammed with a deluge of results and then find yourself sifting through a lot of irrelevant clutter.
A closer peek at this social network mayhem and we notice all sites try very hard to do one thing — keep you social. ‘Try‘ being the keyword. With the advent of AJAX and site design improvements now happening everywhere — quite justifiably — social networking has become an awkward gob of repetitive bells and whistles (some cool and others weak) that make one social site [not so] different from the other.
What we need–
A true master portal. Or, portal(s). A site or site(s) secure and efficient in that they allow users to sign-up and attach to multiple social networks in one sitting — accessing them all through, say, one system control panel. Then [in an ideal world] users would aggregate and utilize the legions of options off their favorite social sites — possibly creating a hybrid site of their own. This [dream] would afford us socialites the best of all social networking worlds and empower us with a web experience beyond what Facebook ever imagined. But no.
Rather than socializing nicely, what you have is infighting — Facebook battling organizers like Power.com; strong-arming their consolidation efforts into the ground. This monster monopoly-like behavior does nothing but hurt the social user.
Light at the end–
Groups are active in bringing the web together — again, Power.com, they consolidate usernames and passwords for users of some social sites — affording one-stop login for all-round socializing. Or Meebo.com where your IM logins are consolidated in one web app — displaying your IM conversations in one true universal chat experience. Then there’s RSS: A -standardized- file format that aggregates and brings you all your preferred news feeds from around the web.
Whether they deliberately mean to or not, most social networking sites are doing a poor job in giving users a standard and centralized portal experience. Instead of sites like Facebook and MySpace actually working together towards a social networking standard, they just as soon continue to grow their monster, proprietary platforms.
You've definitely hit on the crux of the problem. But I also find another: trying to keep family members who are computer-noobs out of trouble whilst signing up for such sites. It's easy to find the base functionality of the site squeezed out by Apps or Plugins (or even Add-Ons, for new IE-to-Firefox users).
To figure out exactly what these sites are for is getting quite difficult. Some use them for the bells and whistles more than for the reasons the sites were actually designed for. Guess that's another LARGE bit of chaff to find the few wheat grains in.
You pegged another area that these sites desperately need to overhaul — privacy. Disappointing as it sounds, Facebook, MySpace and I'm sure others appear far more 'reactive' than proactive when it comes to privacy and personal protection. Here's a perfect example of Facebook playing catch-up on privacy: Facebook Agreed To Make Its Site Safer For Children.
Never know though, with enough backlash these big sites may change -or- someone else may jump in and seize the opportunity… like this beta venture – Cliqset….