http://stephenslighthouse.sirsi.com/archives/2006/01/social_software.html
He asks some questions and ponders some answers:
Key questions:
1. What are they doing right?
2. What can we learn from then?
3. What can we copy?
4. What are the best features, functions, etc.
Hmmm.
I’m no expert but the answers have to be somewhere in:
– How they link people of like interests.
– How they link people and content.
– How the users define their own social networks and the purpose for them.
– How one might manage this so that it doesn’t become ‘just dating’.
– How they manage profiles.
– How they manage ‘reputation’.
– How they manage user-driven privacy level management.
This illustrates the way we should be thinking about these new tools.