To start with the premise of this post is wrong. Social the word, by definition, is a “community, collective or group”. Social networks are indeed this. But what they are really not about is “socializing”. For the most part they are used as a one way communication tool to shout at a group of people. Try this at a cocktail party, you won’t make a lot of friends. Try this with your family and confuse the hell out of them. Those that use online social networks to engage in one-on-one communication are the ones likely to experience a real value in “social networking”. The “one-on-one” filling out the role of “networking” in the phrase. The rest that are taking quizzes, playing games and updating their status with philosophical quotes that they don’t espouse are doing something, but it’s not networking.
So there’s a half thought I had to put down to feel like a genius.
