There was a
kerfluffle in the blogosphere yesterday about the non-announcement of AIMSpace
… a “MySpace” killer to be launched off the AIM platform. One comment made was that despite their
“community” heritage (surely one of the most over-used hype terms of the last
bubble), they were two years too late the party. Whether it manages to unseat the popularity
of MySpace or not, I think we can count on AOL to deliver another mass market
solution. But 43m is a bigger network
than I want – social or otherwise.
Stowe Boyd
had it right when he said there’s an opportunity to create a social networking
tool for the rest of us, and that current offerings targeted to adults and
professionals (e.g. LinkedIn etc.) don’t deliver the goods. Social networking needs to be meaningful and
relevant. It’s not 43m users on a
particularly technology platform. It’s
thousands of micro-segments of individuals who share common passions and
goals.
Last night
I was at a fundraising committee meeting for my totally old-school alma
mater. I ran into a guy from a prior
class, whom I’d not met before, who’s doing work with Web 2.0 technologies. We have much in common between our interests
in the College and emerging technologies, and the education itself. So we’re going to start talking about ways we might collaborate. It was a delightful surprise. This isn’t MIT or Stanford, we studied classical works by Homer, De Tocqueville, Newton and Kant, not technology.
Those kinds
of connections matter at this point in my life. The intersections between my personal interests and my professional
goals are really exciting to me. I’m
beyond caring about random hookups, and I’m not interested in irrelevant,
unsolicited job inquiries.
So I have
to echo the question: when will the Web
2.0 companies deliver social networking for the rest of us?
Technorati Tags:
AIM, AOL, CGM, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0
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