Sorry, I don’t do Social Networks anymore

I couldn't agree more. As I blogged a while back, http://makemarketinghistory.blogspot.com/2006/0... social networks are inherently narcissistic. When it comes to social networks, I'm with Groucho Marx.

Robert, you are now a celebrity, your blog is THE social network for you. I am not an A-lister, but I find myself using LinkedIn a lot less. I don't really ave time to actively reach out to other people, since I am being found through the blog. But a year ago I found LinkedIn very useful, and I suspect for most people in business it still is.

They should think fast of ways to integrate with blogging platforms.

dupe :)

anyway, can we be friends? it won't be patented. :)

Robert, it's really the other way around for LinkedIn. What I mean is, people don't generally join in order to be more easily found, they join in order to more easily find other people.

For example, let's say I need to find an expert of some sort. I can search through LinkedIn and find someone I can be introduced to by someone we both trust (or, at most, someone I trust can introduce me to someone they trust).

Now I understand that for you, the more productive thing to do is to issue a LazyWeb request on your blog, but that doesn't work for all people or in all situations.

When the alternative is spamming everyone in your address book to find a recommended personal injury attorney, or inefficiently asking your closer acquaintances one at a time, LinkedIn looks pretty attractive.

"Join me on Bebo" and other social networking email lure messages are all too common for me. :(

That's why I have 'em blocked :D

An A+ rant, Robert!

What I don't like about LinkedIn is that there's implied pressure to accept an invite from someone that sent you one. I declined adding someone to my circle of friends (or whatever it is called) as he's a wack-job, but I noticed that everyone else I worked with added him (and they know he's nuts).

So what does this tell me about the quality of people's connections on there? They aren't recommendations at all, but a signal that a person's worked with a lot of other people and it means nothing about that relationship.

I know there's a sponsorship / recommendation thing on there but I'm too lazy to do it.

The only social network that is fun is facebook!

Granted it's only useful for the university crowd, but it's a great site. Uploading pcitures and setting permissions is really easy, and it's a nice way for people who aren't tech oriented to share snippets of their lives with their schoolmates and friends.

Sure, these people could set up blogs, but most people I know aren't interested in writing about their lives (or sharing anything with the whole internet), but are more interested in having a centralized place where they can display their personality and their photos, interact with their friends, and see their friends stuff too.

p.s. I HATED social networks and still hate those dumb invitations by email, before playing around with facebook. :)

People that actually have a life don't need social networks -- they already have one in the flesh -- parties, get-togethers, etc.
The people I admire in the tech world would never use these kinds of online gimmicks anyway... people like Theo de Raadt, Linus Torvalds, Dru Lavigne, Richard Stallman, etc...

I hate social networks too. They all just seem like elaborate games to me. If I needed an elaborate game, I'd use Second Life...

Besides, nobody ever invites me. :)

You'd probably like this then : http://www.airbagindustries.com/introvertster/i...

And yet you play in SecondLife which could be perceived as one of the biggest social networks around, and play on xBox live?

Don't get me wrong - I agree that social networking sites aren't great at all but really your post should be I don't use "exclusive social networking" sites.

Kudos to you though for being one of the first who just says "contact me via my blog"

Simply put, if you need 'technology' as a catalyst for your social networking needs that's fine. As a social destination, these services fall short. In my experience, there is NO replacing 'face to face' contact and socializing in the 'real world'.

From several systems I do play around with, the only one I use is openbc - because it helps me keep track of all the contact information of other people I am connected with. Linkedin annoys me highly as this is only good for an email address.

Plaxo annoys me because it sends out stupid requests. And so on. But people tend to

In your case: It would help if you when you are on such networks would just state this. As in "i am here so you don't invite me to, but please stay away from adding me, I will not connect with you".

It's not a question of a tool but of the approach. Why to accept people to your loop if you don't know them in person (even if they figure out how to invite you directly)? At the same time LinkedIn brings its advantage for folks whose address book doesn't list thousands of people. You're an exception, even an exception of exceptions with your pulsatile and blog.

What more interesting is how do you manage your emails in general? Some people get rid of a Blackberry and stop answering emails, others even delete emails CC-ing them. I published my view on the problem here: http://roman-rytov.typepad.com/miles/2006/07/ad...

How do you manage your hundreds of emails and what is your recipe?

I liked MeetUps, before it went toasty. Like
getting together 'The 4400' fans in a local area, to swap theories and story concepts. Network to meet face to face, only thing that has ever "worked" for me.

But then people are apathetic and don't maintain interests, so a group with 100+ members, on Meet-Up day gets 3 or 4 stragglers, and invariably they are all (half scary) types that I have nothing in common with over said topic, and are general bores when off-topic. Real clubs and groups require active "Officers" and serious funding to stay alive, as things don't just spontaneously emerge, it requires real effort. And it's not enough to share a single interest, whole range of personality elements that go into developing relationships and fusing groups together.

As for the social networks themselves, it's all gerbil-activity fake, it will all eventually bubble collapse under it's own weight or just morph quasi-MLM hooking the suckers. Granted the more smaller and isolated the environment (SL, Facebook) the better it works, but it's still fake and all so much wasted energy.

I do have to admit I hate to get tons of email that I will never get around to. It really is a pain in the butt. I will not make that mistake again. Social networks that is.

AMEN!

I just read this post and then scrolled down a bit and ended up going to read Anil's post about Making Something Meaningful. I was struck by an odd connection/disconnection between the two posts. Anil talks about how "One of our obligations is to build tools that help people connect with their friends and family in a meaningful way." He talks about how using Vox (SixAparts new service which seems to have strong links to this social network idea) he made trivial discoveries that he found meaningful. I haven't really gotten into any of the social networks that you've listed, but it seems to me that these tools are trying to help people make these meaningful discoveries and connections. Maybe all of the current tools aren't any good, or maybe you are in a position were the popularity of your blog already provides you with enough/too many connections. My guess is that your complaint has a lot to do with the large number of connections that you get and that most of the current tools are seen as ways of creating new connections instead of exploring current connections.

that Friendster patent is lame. i think big time social networks like MySpace and Bebo would take them on. i hope.

as for social networks, i find it very useful not in making myself easy to find but in finding other people and finding cool stuff from other people (like one of your commenters noted above.) the trick of course is choosing the right social network for you instead of joining all of them and spreading yourself thin.

“One of our obligations is to build tools that help people connect with their friends and family in a meaningful way."

i admire Anil Dash for this and the rest of Six Apart for marrying blogging with social networking. keyword here is "meaningful". "meaning and purpose" is what also drives a new social networking site called Zaadz (disclosure: i was recently been hired by Zaadz). Zaadz puts the "purpose and meaning" spin on the whole idea of social networking. it also encourages people to blog :) i am a long-time blogger. but i also keep a blog there.

my two cents.

~C (for Collaborative intelligence)

boy u gay

Hai Robert Scoble,

i have gone through your message.
my self having one site(http://www.ilaka.in).It contains local city(Hyderabad, India) search engine.I wont to expose my site to all.

I though to do social networking.But u r opposing to do social networking.

Can you please tell me what i have to do?


Thanks & regards
vijay