The end of social networks, already?

The end of social networks, already?
by Harold Jarche | Thu, 10/16/2008 - 14:18

I've been facilitating an online course called Work Literacy that has about 700 members participating. Our first week focused on social networks and how they could be used for learning. We used Ning, a free hosted platform, for our main point of online presence and then discussed other social networks, including Linked-In and Facebook. Of course, one of the major points of discussion was that you have to learn how to use each network and not all of your contacts are on each network. The use of OpenID helps, but it is not robust nor accepted by all networks.

This may change with GoDaddy's recent entry, called SmartSpace. You can create online space through this service which includes blogs, chat, wikis, e-mail and group creation, as well as integration with many other services, like photo-sharing. I wonder if this will spell the demise of social networks. The natural order, in my mind, is that each person is a node and we each have a broad range of relationships. We used to have to go into a social network to connect, but with SmartSpace it seems that we can connect to almost any network, so who needs to join one? Will this spell the end of social networks like Facebook when you no longer need to be a member in order to have online relationships? This new entry bears watching to see how it develops and may be an easy way for educators to set up collaborative learning without the restrictions of an LMS or the cultural baggage of certain social networks.

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