Sent from my iPad 4GThe status quo sucks.

Sent from my iPad 4G

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your thoughtful response.

Whether open networks (e.g., MySpace), middle-ground (e.g., Facebook) or closed networks (e.g., SmallWorld) are the ultimate winners of the social network field competitive field is an extremely interesting question. My personal thoughts are that there’s room enough for all of them. I think the critical mass of the Facebook population is too great for it to lose enough steam to make it irrelevant. Whether niche networks can survive, by virtue of their engagement with their given communities, is a different question. Needless to say, such networks must have a strategy for fostering conversation — a topic which I recently posted about on my company’s blog.

I agree with you, Jane, that there will be a general trend toward openness. I think it will become a given, if it isn’t already, that people will just have to become more cognizant about managing their online reputations more diligently through online social media. I think, though, what will change is the depth of openness that people adopt on the internet. Knowing that they are visible to others, people will more actively manage their online personas, and one ‘markets’ themselves online will become an ever-important part of participating in online life.

Thanks again, Jane, and I hope to hear back from you on Living in The Future!

But in my opinion, young people don’t care as much about these privacy issues because they’ve grown up sharing their lives with everybody else. I think the world will trend towards openness, it’s just a question of how open it’ll get. I think Facebook may face a media backlash for a while but I guarantee that nobody is going to care about what Facebook did 6 months from now because they’ll be used to it and Facebook will be unleashing something else that everybody will moan and groan about. Just the nature of reality.