Weekend thoughts on social spaces

I have been struck recently by the level of use of social tools by those involved in the recruitment advertising industry. It seems most people have a blog be it personal or work related, a vast proportion of people are on Twitter and Facebook, there are a smattering of myspace pages, ning networks and recruitment specific community sites. All of this raises some interesting questions though. Much as we all love this and understand the value of social networking have we just become another gated community?

We, as advertisers, hate the idea of gated communities as they are generally places where ads can't run. The guys at facebook recently started pitching the value of FB communities and they have launched their new social graph technology. Now, when I worked down at Spannerworks (shortlived as it was), they had a great social mapping tool, it was the first I'd ever seen and it did exactly what the FB guys are claiming is new insight. I remember talking to Anthony Mayfield and Jim Byfield about social networks and what they meant and they danger outlined by them was that the network becomes a certain size, gets cool and closes it's doors.

Zuckerberg and the Facebook guys are basically using the Metcalfe model (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law) for valuing a social network but I'm not so sure I buy it simply because the social graph they used is based on an open network (like a telephone network). Facebook is itself a permission and trust based network. If they are going to open it up for all then yeah, the Metcalfe model works and the facebook social graph is applicable. But if by doing that they have eroded the trust given to FB in the first place then the value of that network is diminished. FB by itself is a gated community that is permission based. I've never really ventured out of my network on there and despite having a large number of "friends" on the site I rarely interact with anyone outside a small group. Therefore the idea that the FB team have about the level of reach an individual or brand can have through the site I feel is a little flawed. As I've mentioned before, their targeted ads seem pretty ineffective. I've straw polled our office and several people in the industry and I'm yet to find anyone who clicks FB ads or who is suckered by apps any more.

So is the future of social media just a series of gated communities or is it a wider, more social future we see in front of us? The twitter experiment is certainly showing the growth of open networking is strong but is this going to last forever? Are people with thousands of followers just going to be viewed like people with thousands of linkedin contacts? It seems a little like it's a vanity thing for some and a value thing for others. When we get down to the basic needs and desires people have in networking they are either looking for a closed group to keep up with those in their circle or an open group to prove how popular they are. Will twitter turn into a series of small microblogging groups? I think it could well be, we've already seen the growth of Twibes and I'm sure there will be more and more ways to close the group you talk to or limit your comms for certain types of communication.

Interesting times.