Social networking, Web2.0 and generally mixing it up

Posted by Webmaster on 19 May 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: social networking, blogs, twitter, web2.0

Everyone is at it.

It seems like there are more blogs than topics in the universe.

There are more blogs about blogs than there are bloggers.

People are tweeting about blogging, blogging about tweeting, sharing, bookmarking....

Where will it end?

Hopefully it won't.

I'm not a big blogger. I'm also a VERY modest tweeter. I have more than one and less than a hundred [I think] friends on facebook. I have 100 of every possible alert or request or notification on there too. For a guy in this industry, I'm probably pretty lame.

I tell all my clients 'you need a blog', 'get your news on feedburner (...that reminds me :o)' and suggest all kinds of business networking, communication, sharing, viral-ing things.

Let's face it, social networking has now epanded quite vigorously into business networking. Things like linkedin http://www.linkedin.co.uk have been around for ages and there are now many free business indexes to add yourselves to, old ones like Applegate http://www.applegate.co.uk and new ones, like the really cool FreeIndex http://www.freeindex.co.uk.

One of my favourite web sites of the last 12 months has been Qype http://www.qype.co.uk. True to form, I've been a slacker of immense non-proportions and haven't added much to it, but I really liked the way it was presented. I preferred the scheme and layout prior to the current one, but it is still a really nice way of checking new things out and telling the world about it.

My point you ask...

Information overload is upon us. Most bloggers, tweeters and other contributors are drowning in a sea of so-so similarity and samey-ness. I think the social aspect of it all has fallen by the wayside, making people venture into obtuse comment and invasive narrative in a vain attempt to be interesting and popular with people they don' actually know. It's all about to fragment and reduce into smaller segments of like minded bloggers, tweeters and contributors with global notoriety being reserved for celebs, industrati [is that really a word? I may have made it up, which is cool] and the already established.

Where will this lead? Well, funnily enough, I think it will serve to create better 'communities' within blogging and social networking. A little like a FaceBook reverse where everyone who only know people virtually will once again regain the desire to meet face to face or communicate with people with very similar tastes, bored and frustrated by the vagueness, information overload and downright nonsense that is starting to pervade the internet.

Don't worry though. It will all work out.