Ever since Google Buzz was released last week, my frustration with the social networking landscape has had me sketching on the shower walls and scribbling on scraps of paper trying to make sense of my online world. This morning’s shower insight calmed me a bit. Just as I don’t hang out in every physical venue that I might, or go to every networking event that I could, perhaps I shouldn’t be so bothered by the multiple, disjoint conversations that spring up on the same online article or post. Just because I have a conversation with some friends on Monday about the rogue wave that hit spectators during Mavericks doesn’t mean my colleagues need to become part of that same stream on Tuesday when we discuss the same topic. Similarly, if I comment on someone’s blog but I miss the insightful commentary taking place about it on Buzz, who cares? And if my brilliant observation on Facebook is invisible to my followers on Twitter, who cares?
Clearly I care, otherwise I wouldn’t be ranting. I care because we have the potential to facilitate broader conversations, increase understanding, and ease discovery. I care because I’d like to have one coherent online presence from where anyone could subscribe to any public feed that I generate – feeds that would include not only content I generate, but commentary I make. I’d like the industry to stop building over-featured gated communities, lean into the issues of identity, trust, and interaction, and foster an ecosystem of tools that set us free instead of tying us in knots. I think anything short of that is antisocial.
Update: Join the conversation over on Buzz. See, you'd never have known it was there if I hadn't told you! Argh!
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