Social Networks

I’ve never been a big fan of MySpace. The interface is counterintuitive, the flashing ads are an eyesore and the code is a mess. The news that the site is over the proverbial hill doesn’t come as any shock.

Social networks are very helpful for people that want to reach hip, tech-savvy young folks. But eventually, the walled-garden model will fall by the wayside entirely. In its place will be a set of easy-to-install widgets that attach to a server like add-ons attach to Firefox. These widgets will allow folks to blog, share and tag photos, respond to messages, generate feeds, network personally and professionally, or whatever else they want to do. Social networks as we know them will meld seamlessly with the other functions of the Web.

So where does that leave musicians, record labels, clubs and other organizations that want to use MySpace, Facebook and other social networks to promote themselves? Back at square one: hosting their own blog.

I couldn’t agree more with Flick of Puddlegum when he writes, “I’d rather focus my energies developing my own traffic than nursing off of a corporate monster.” Organizations should build out their own websites, host their own blogs and make social networks an offshoot. Building your own hub of information about yourself is always a better solution than scattering your information to the winds and hoping that your fan base will continue to frequent whichever site you’ve spent the most time and energy building a presence on.

Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, Facebook, social networks, widgets, blogs

I couldn’t agree more with my colleague Jason Preston’s assessment that Facebook stands to take a big gust of wind out of Del.icio.us’ sails with its’ new “share” feature.

I particularly like the feature because it allows users to upload a video to YouTube and then import it into Facebook, allowing them to stay within Facebook’s walled garden while enjoying awesome YouTube content. The “share” feature also allows users to add videos privately, which means that I can upload and import slightly incriminating videos of college debauchery to share with my scattered group of friends without jeopardizing my future credibility as the President of the United States.
I still use del.icio.us for research, and to generate our cool list o’ links page. But for sharing information with my friends, Facebook has become my one-stop hub.

I’d like to see them improve the service even more by allowing users to tag friends in the content that’s relevant to them, the way you already can with photos. Obviously that has broader implications for privacy and control of personal information, but with the proper privacy controls, it could be a big hit.

Chalk one up for the Facebook crowd. And while you’re at it, chalk one up for for Jason. He’s pretty smart for an Oxy kid.