In the last few weeks Quora came alive and MySpace is dead…
So we’re upgrading our DespairWear for the new year!
So we’re upgrading our DespairWear for the new year!
Social Networking in 2011 is neither social nor networking. Discuss.
Props to Christian Bale for illustrating the new social order:
Facebook = Narcissism x Stalking
Quora = Narcissism x OCD
Foursquare = Stalking x OCD
…and Twitter is the one ring to rule them all.
This is the state-of-the-art in social networking right now:
Facebook forces me to bring all of my friends and interests with me wherever I Connect, like Yoda riding my back telling me what to do, grammarlessly and ceaselessly.Twitter has no memory and as a result is useless if I want to have an actual conversation. The community and content have nowhere to continually improve but elsewhere, so Twitter will always exist as exhaust.Zynga is the Chuck E. Cheese’s of the Internet: I buy phony currency with real money to play games I won’t care about in a year to earn tickets redeemable for stuff that does not move my life forward or contribute to my genuine happiness.Foursquare and Quora combined have fewer than 10 million users. Compared with the size of the Web, that rounds to zero.
The world can do better.
The future of social networking is waiting to be invented.
…
…
In Kushinagar the trees lower their blossoms on the Buddha’s death bed.
His last works at the age of eighty are:
Somewhere, something incredible
is waiting to be known.
Social networking, we’re ready for a change.
Bring it.
ifindkarma. elegance is refusal. 
There is good enough of Narcissism in Foursquare and OCD in Fb! Isn’t it?
Comment by Anonymous — January 14, 2011 @ 5:47 am
Over time, these services all start to resemble each other…It’s no coincidence that Facebook launched Statuses, Questions, and Places to compete with Twitter, Quora, and Foursquare.
Comment by Anonymous — January 14, 2011 @ 7:58 pm
As soon as it went mobile it became antisocial. If you’re staring at your phone more than at the person across from you, you are NOT being social. You’re telling others how cool it would be if you were actually present enough where you are to be part of an awesome conversation. Live life. Don’t report it as if you were an outside observer.If that happens? Then the architecture and tools of the sites have to change to reflect the use and needs of the user.Systems evolve – but usually not until their users do.
Comment by Lucretia Madden Pruitt — January 20, 2011 @ 5:33 am
Good point, Lucretia!I can’t believe we picked an Oscar winner for our diagram!Next time we’ll have to employ Natalie Portman…
Comment by Anonymous — March 1, 2011 @ 7:13 pm