Social networking doomed

By Nick Booth

Jun 27 2008 11:54AM

Academics have finally found a way to kill off social networking.

Since the social notworking craze took off, scientists, technologists and kill-joys have united in condemnation of this silly sideline. But they’ve had little success so far.

Now an antidote seems possible, and a deluge of killer books, round tables and deathly corporate white papers threatens to analyse the life out of this social phenomenon.

Yesterday Managed Objects and Forrester Research hosted a round table in London on how web 2.0 was going to change the world, by making corporations more agile.

The INQ could not be there, but we're pretty sure the talk would all have been about the new generation of meshy nibblers of information, who graze on data packets while permanently on the move. Proctor and Gamble would have been mentioned, as would American Airlines' invention of flexible pricing.

Sit through two hours of that, with a plate of food in front of you that you can't touch, and you'll never want to look at MySpace again.

But social networking is getting a double whammy. The second fatal hit comes from the publishing industry, as books like Crowdsourcing start to hit the shelves. A surfeit of titles will hit Amazon soon. All will hint at sensational revelations that fail to materialise, even if you're one of the few that makes it through 300 pages.

If that doesn't kill all creative instincts, nothing will. By this time next year, could social networking be dead?

Besides being boring, these business books never practice what they preach. If collaboration is so great, why are these books authored by a loner? And if people really want their information in engaging chunks, why publish an 80,000 word lecture, with no pictures.

Shouldn't a real book on collaboration read like this?

AndyM: Does anyone use web 2.0 for work? BillG: LOL! RupertM: PMSL LarryEll: Fur Cough, ScottMac: Git outta here, punk AndyM: But what about Mash Ups, agile corporations and the wisdom of crowds? BillG: Hello, security. Can you get this guy outta my Facebook?