Facebook will someday fade, will you?
Conceptually, I started down this road years ago. The term myspace, to me, was always something owned by the MySpace organization and was certainly not "my space". Alas, connecting personal internet properties of the blog/site kind such that the user can participate in any number of social engagements, perhaps even without leaving home, so to speak, remained only an idea for me. It looks like Chris Messina is one of several acting upon it.
I watched his video, and have been reading some (okay, much) of the commentary/discussion around the subject.
What interests me most here is the focus, and some of the assumptions. As for focus, it appears the idea of "friends" as the central element defining the social graph, remains. That is limiting progress towards my personal goal of a broadly accessible learning/knowledge focused social network experience. Anyone spending any time developing their "web worker" skills will know that strong tie relationships of the social networking "friends" kind have only limited value.
As for assumptions, one stands out in particular, though perhaps only for me and principally because I want to hear it. It seems that while most everyone is still paying homage to Facebook, an increasing number of people are coming to believe that it is not the last word.
I don't think the time is far off now when the majority realize that the only reasonable way of creating and maintaining an online presence, or persona, or multiple personas, will be on properties you own and control to the greatest extent possible. If all you do is rent space from MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any of them, you're limiting yourself.
Why rent when you can buy? You can still visit the renters.
