Salon.com Technology | You are who you know
Here's my problem with social software: social software, for all intents and purposes, is great for people who are social already.
For everyone else, the people who need it, the concepts don't work.
Let's start out with a simple one: there's too many, and they don't interact. This problem occurs a *lot* online, especially in online services where an account has a "standing", in the sense that someone has accumulated karma (Slashdot) or some other such points on a system. Those points aren't transferrable -- so you're stuck in their system. Same with the glut of social software. You're stuck with your friends on one system -- there's no inter-communications between systems. I'm also probably not the first, 10th, or 100th person to point this out.
Another horrid point is that none of these seem to get how people meet. When I meet people, yes, it's sometimes through other people. Most of the time, though, I meet people through social activites: work, play, going out, those things. The way I meet people online is inherently different -- I meet people by meeting them through their words, and what they say.
Posted by Ted Stevko at June 15, 2004 08:03 AM | TrackBack