Squarevox

That’s one of the implications of this look at the state of online social media from The Economist. Comparing Microsoft’s acquisition of Hotmail years ago, and AOL’s recent purchase of Bebo, they write:

Both deals, in their respective decades, illustrate a great paradox of the internet in that the premise underlying them is precisely half right and half wrong. The correct half is that a next big thing—web-mail then, social networking now—can indeed quickly become something that consumers expect from their favourite web portal. The non sequitur is to assume that the new service will be a revenue-generating business in its own right.

The article talks about the problems with trying to get money out of running a social networking site, but a larger issue is raised: are these attempts at turning interactions into money fundamentally at odds with a user-centric model of online social media?

But should users really have to visit a specific website to do this sort of thing? “We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.

The problem with today’s social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks’ lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users’ information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.

That’s putting it kindly. Moreover, it might distort the actual value of these services to users:

This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.

(If the reference to Thunderbird seems odd, it’s because it follows a passage in which the writer notes that email accounts may be a logical home for the social graph, given how many of our interactions pass through them.)

Charlene Li’s “social media are like air” notion is become more credible as we’re bombarded by a not just social networks - from the all-purpose Facebooks and MySpaces to specialized sites - but services to filter and aggregate what’s in those other networks. Now and then someone hits one out of the park, because they combine the social graph with the ability to do something compelling. Twitter would be an example of this.

Mostly, though, it’s starting to feel like clutter. Clutter with some very neat things scattered around in it, of course, but more options and services than any typical user can possible deal with.

The possibility of launching the next cool social networking site and making money off it will bring new entrants in, of course. But one must wonder if this is going to pay off for users, or if a different approach is needed.