There are too many social networks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t room for more. I don’t want anyone to make “the new Facebook” – Facebook, for all its faults, is Facebook, and it’s a site on which I’ve got pretty much everyone I’ve ever known and with whom I’d like to stay in contact listed. What I do want, however, is for people to make highly specialised social network sites and applications that perform a useful function very well, and interoperate with other networks nicely.
I can’t see myself replacing the big networks (Facebook, Twitter) with the Latest Big Thing, but I can certainly see myself using a “network of networks” – a constellation of networks that play nicely with each other, fulfil specific needs and together, give me a lot of control over who I’m sharing with and what I’m sharing.
With that in mind, I started trying out two new apps this week – Path and Pin Drop, both of which look like promising new stars in that “social constellation” (an utterly wanky term which I’m not honestly suggesting anyone else use, but I can’t think of anything better right now).