My brain has been popping with random bits and bytes over the past few days. I have also been stuck in front of the keyboard A L0T. So this may come out as more of a rant than intended, just think of me as channeling Andy Rooney.
- I have looked at so many social media/web2.0 community sites in the last week that my brain hurts from seeing so many faces boxed into little 50x50 squares. Where are the designers/UE folks who can think outside the box? There has got to be a new way to look at this. A grid of small faces is not organic and feels flat. Think about how Etsy reinvented the way we interact with items when shopping -- I want more of THAT.
- I am afraid that people - how they live and what they need - is getting lost in all the noise and geek speak around technology, media & social ads these days. Let's put the social back in social software. What do people want and need? And it ain't another bite on the neck or yet another place to "express, share and connect" with friends.
- We have reached a key moment in social media - I am now smarter about you my friends/connections/colleagues. This is fun and informative. Now, I would like to be smarter about me and you together. Great - I know that you are stuck in traffic or eating a pizza or getting on a plane - but how about we take all this data and do a bit of analytic magic to tell me which of my friends I connect to the most and share the most with [no not just a simple graph]? Which are experts on X and which on Y? I crave a deeper mapping of my network and how I can use it better.
If we are to live in a world that is flatter, more expansive and more loosely joined - we can do better. We have to, or all we will end up with is a lot of noise.
