"SCRUZIA" ... a very infrequently updated weblog ...

2005-05-17

gmail as a social networking site

Cryptic thought of the week: Orkut is a diversion. gmail is the social networking site that actually matters to Google. (I posted some similar thoughts to an internal weblog pilot system at my employer's site, some time last year. It included the wonderful phrase "-ster"-crazy. As in Jason Kottke going "-ster"-crazy about keeping up with those labor-intensive social networking sites. (Well, I thought it was wonderful when I made it up.)) Short version: social networking sites are a fad, a means to a meat-space end. In order to get long-term extractable social networking data from the customer base, a SN operator needs to be able to get that data from things that its customers do anyway, every day. Like, say, sending and receiving email. The links may not be the same quality as the explicit ones that users create on SN-Sites, but who's to say which ones are actually more meaningful? The ones that are created self-consciously, or the ones that reflect how people's communications really work?

2 comments:

roclin said...
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roclin said...
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