Social Sites

Interesting graphic and list of social sites from Focus: The Boom of Social Sites

As one commentator (named "How the Common Man Sees It") said it:

Wow. I’ve heard of about 10% of those. I now consider myself officially out of touch with the internet.

And from Stephen Welton:

Wow! The common denominator is that people are meeting people! That will never change.

While these sites all facilitate great new services and ways of interacting, my problem with them is, they mostly try to fragment, privatize, and monopolize the internet in order to cash in. E.g. they all invent email again:). Same for blogging etc. But all just inside their network.

The same that happened on the PC with propietary file formats is bound to happen again. Companies setting standards by using their first mover advantage and then it takes a decade of establishing open standards to wring back control of your own data.

Well, guess what, I don't want to sign into Ning or Xing in order to read or send a message to another person. How can I disable on Facebook making public the list of people I am interested to play around with. Why do I need Xing or LinkedIn to publish a list of people that have "officially" confirmed to be connected with me? The good think now, the masses (aka the kids) are way faster in moving further along if it so pleases them or something better or new comes along.

Pointer via The Big Picture.