social networking

Facebook and MySpace are trying to turn themselves into application platforms (how else will they monetize their audience?). Google is pushing OpenSocial to compete with it. But no matter what features they offer their users, they user still orbits the site.

Scot Hacker talks of BuddyPress changing the game, turning “social networks” from destination websites, to features you’ll find on every website. And the “social network” is the internet, with all those sites sharing information meaningfully.

Some might say this is little more than overgrown XFN, but Tris Hussey thinks Ning is on the ropes and Facebook should be worried.

At least the design shows all the right stuff.

Just when you thought I was done talking about how the internet really does touch everything, Lichen posts some details from the most recent University of New Hampshire Res Life student survey and it gets me going again. In order, the top three activities are:

• socializing (15.8 hours/week)
   
• studying, excluding in-class time (12.5 hours/week)
   
• instant messaging, (9.3 hours/week)

Lichen also points out that IM activity was reported separately from “personal internet use,” which got an additional 8.4 hours/week.

The survey doesn’t appear to be online, so I can’t tell how many other computer-related activities are reported or how activities like “studying” may (or may not) also include computer use.

I won’t link to The New York Times anymore, but when Ross Mayfield quotes them, I don’t have to.

The story is that life is full of interruptions. The typical office environment today apparently allows workers “only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else.” Worse, “each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a spreadsheet.”

Interesting stuff. Mayfield points it out as a reason to build more awareness of this in our communication/social software. He also popped this link to Jon Udell’s post on attention economics.

Ross Mayfield says Web 2.0 is “made of people.” Tim O’Reilly tells us it’s about participation. And to Marc Canter, it’s the connectivity.

More to come…

The developers describe Flock as

[T]he world’s most innovative social browsing experience. We call it the two-way web.

Which is a good enough sales pitch to make me try the free demo, but it’s all still a private beta. Perhaps they’re trying to prove the point that nothing builds buzz better than unavailability. Osakasteve gushes:

A browser that is designed around social software like blogs and flickr

And Roland Tanglao overflowed:

I was blown away! Drag and drop blogging – drag text from a blog post and it automatically creates a cite tag with a link to the original post and the quoted text is indented using a blockquote tag. Drag and drop Flickr photos. And Chris teased me with some more future features like having del.icio.us as your bookmarks (goodbye to useless local bookmarks).

Extra: it’s based on Firefox and will fully love Mac, Win, and Linux. Interesting ideas…where’s my beta invite?