This is going to sound a little dark but here it goes anyhow… I’ve been on the road for a little while now and looked at my vladville.com account. God I’m popular. Not.
Not a day goes by that some loser I probably met for 3 seconds doesn’t ask to become my e-friend. Hey, are you on Facebook? Which address are you using for Groove? Does your Asterisk support anonymous calls, I want to dial direct to you via SIP? loser@loserville.org has added you to their buddy list. Block!
Sound familiar?
Ok… so here it goes… you know how you have like 3 friends in real life since you graduated from college? Maybe one that you can count on to help you move? Oh, I’m sure you were popular in college and you have 8,000 entries on your SIM card but your speed dial list consists of your family and a local pizza joint. Now here is the sad part – you are far less e-interesting. Far, far, far less. I’m beeing too nice here perhaps. Ok. Here it is: I’d rather play “punch the monkey” banner ad than read your personal profile on the cool-people-network-of-the-week.
Ok, so I am beeing too nice here but the point kind of remains: there is 0 value in this uberconnectivity. Why? Because nobody happens to be doing anything at all that is worth any particular attention. If they are, they are smart enough to realize they are the top 1% of the content producers and most are doing so for commercial purposes. So whats the point of getting into a pile of people that just stare at each other and do nothing? Exactly. Look at Twitter: What are you doing? The answer: Nothing interesting, to anyone, anywhere. This sites claim to fame is that it publishes commentary of idiots that are not insightful enough to say anything on other social networks such as Digg or del.icio.us.
Here is my professional evaluation of other social networks. LinkedIn: Unemployable and proud of it. Myspace: Sexual-Predator-In-Training. Facebook: Myspace with less epileptic shock (or: I’d like a teenager but keep it legal). Classmates: $20/mo to stalk your high school girlfriend. Twitter: Worthlessness, documented.
Both of my Web 2.0 go-to people are talking about this. Sarah is feeling the social networking fatigue. Robert wonders how he’ll keep up with social networks.
Web2.0point is that nobody cares, for the most part. There are numerous comments out there how 90% of digg stories gets submitted by maybe 2% of the user base. So what are all of these social networks good for? Satisfying curiosity at the peak of boredom. Let me illustrate. A few weeks ago I had the following conversation with Susanne, heavilly paraphrased:
Susanne: Loser XYZ just added me as his friend on Facebook.
Vlad: Hold on.
Vlad: How creepy would it be if I went through your friends list and added the hot chicks to my friends list?
Susanne: Um. Very.
And there you go. Web 2.0. You’ve got one person that you wouldn’t mind being stuck in the elevator with and 2,000 others that you’re kind of curious how drunk they got before they snapped their profile picture…. and then used it as their default profile pic, in a futile attempt to say: Look at me world, I am FUN!
No, hon, you’re not. As Chris Rock says, “Go get kidnapped or something.”
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