Rejecting Social Networking

The blogosphere is debating the relative merits of social networks, and the amount of time that they consume to use them at all. While governments are busy banning the use of social networks while on the job. The ultimate time wasters and ways to communicate with millions of people you didn’t know are facing a backlash that will have a major impact on future social networks.

We are basically seeing the results of what happens when you give people the ability to communicate with anyone about anything, and letting this happen on a global basis. With people pulling back from the whole thing being lead by the same techno-literati that started the whole shooting match, the future of social networking has no choice but to become more splintered.

With Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and other systems like Twitter and Jaiku, and the influx of systems snipping at the heels of those systems, the ability to become overloaded is really simple. All you have to do is use them, use them a lot, and like e-mail or blog comments, you find yourself spending all your time on the sites and doing little else of any value.

We are a society about to learn major lessons about time management and commitment. We have real friends, real family, and it is unreasonable to think that anyone could manage 1000’s of friends without a personal manager. Maybe it is a good time to become a personal manager to manage all the requests, connections, e-mails, and otherwise, distilling those communications down to the basic essential things that the person needs to know.

The backlash will be interesting to see play out, but it is doubtful that it will have anything really meaningful in the world of Technology ADD that we live in. These people have done it to themselves, and that really shows that all that is new and shiny really does not improve life at all.