Here’s a free idea for the taking: build a Facebook-like social network but put in place an arbitrary, ridiculously-low cap on the number of possible connections – seven, maybe. A small fraction of the average number of connections people that people already have on their existing social networks, a number that pretty much limits it to your closest friends. Create a social network where all of the useful communication tools are in place, but they’re intended for deep sharing rather than the deliberate creation of a persona for public consumption.
So many services start off being useful tools for communication with friends and colleagues and then become discovered by (to put it nicely) ‘the highly-social’. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this type of person – Jason Calacanis is a prime example, and I like him just fine – but as soon as people start whipping out the connection penis in public, the service ceases to be about deep sharing and starts being about displays of status. You can resist it, of course, by steadfastly refusing to play that game and diligently keeping your connections manageable, but you’ll have to resign yourself to the reputation loss that comes from not building up your number. So you either lose face or legitimacy – pick your poison.
It’d be nice to have a service where you couldn’t be a social gadfly, even if you wanted to – I suspect it’d grow slowly be quite popular. (Hey, Twitter has already shown that restrictions rock. Did anyone suspect they’d get such mileage out of 140 characters?) Let me know if you’ve heard of such a thing, because I’d be the first to sign on. And you’ve got a built-in business model. If someone really really really has to bring on that eighth or ninth or tenth special friend, let them – for a price.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t know if something like this exists, but you’re touching on something I’ve thought about for a while…
* Our parents generation that use social networks have had to go back in memory, and add people.
* Our generation it’s probably not been that long, but we stil go back
* The next generation has all their friends in Facebook/Bebo/….. already.
For example my little sister, of ~16. She has her friends from school, to be expected. What’s the long term of that?
One upon a time you grew, you fell out with people, you lost relationships over time. Re-discovering them was sometimes fun, sometimes painful etc. You have a drop-off rate (I’m no social psychologist, might be another term).
What we have now from my little sisters point of view is to always be connect to everyone you went to school with, then high school, college, uni, etc. What does that mean? How does that affect us? To know everyone is to know no-one. How does *that* affect us?
What you’ve suggest is more human, at least by current standards. I like it. The future however…
So true. Especially the Calacanis part.
Just this weekend, when I signed up for friendfeed, I discovered that it was yet another SBS (spam broadcast system) for the twittery stylings of Jason Calacanis, Fred Wilson and Mike Arrington!
Once they are in your contact list, you are forever haunted by their uber-social spammery.