So the other day I get asked which social network I found most interesting right now. Since social networks have been kind of boring lately I answered “Facebook“, motivating it with some lame rant about them being first to correctly model the user’s social behavior, the feed (which I actually don’t find that amazing) and then showing that they weren’t just a one hit wonder when they launched their platform play. Yawn. Right?
But what would be the “right” answer? After thinking about it some more, I still find Flickr the most interesting one, since they managed to cultivate such a creative atmosphere, look and feel. Or maybe it’s LinkedIn, aspecially from a business standpoint with their sky high RPMs, potential for becoming (they already are) a major player for recruitment etc. Or maybe it’s the metaplatform play of Ning, the social network to end all social networks?
The right answer, of course, is no social network is interesting by it self. At least not anymore. The interesting stuff are the services and features that can be enabled the social web as a whole, by using the social graph (lacking a better word) and the content produced with social distribution in mind. I can’t see why Facebook, MySpace and others will be able to keep apps from being distributed, since the limitations in those environments limits the quality that one can achieve in terms of features and user experience.
So the companies to watch aren’t the social networks in themselves, but the initiatives leveraging multiple social networks such as Slide or Rockyou, or data portability such as MySpace/Google Friend Connect, modular publishing platforms such as WordPress etc, pushing the platform from being an individual social *network*, to the social *web* as a whole.
