In my world – Twitter and Facebook streams seem to be slowing down, while I’m hearing rumors of more people “using” both services – it’s not translating to me seeing new faces. Hell, I’m even seeing fewer familiar faces.

And half expecting to hear Whit Stillman‘s next project is titled “Social Network”.

Not a bad thing. Scenes change. The exciting pieces turn bland.

We know that. One of the first social networks – Geocities, launche in 1994, recently closed down. Five years from now it could easily be – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FourSquare, or Tumblr.

“I can’t blame Myspace, YouTube, Facebook or any of these sites for creating such a genius trap. I mostly blame myself for relying on these things like everyone else has for so long.” – Brian, musician

“But we don’t have NEA¹ with Twitter, and that’s why tweeting is starting to stagnate, and developers like Dave are working on getting past it.” – Doc Searls

1. Nobody owns them, Everybody can use them and Anybody can improve them

A while ago, I heard Someone Influential¹ arguing that the problem with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc, is that they are inherently interpersonal spaces designed and built by asocial people.

Who else happily spends that much time between-chair-and-keyboard rather than out, with, um, people?

As the argument goes, our actual social relationships are like good wine: built over time by an amalgamation of interchanges, contexts, signaling, emotions, subtly, nuance, and complexity.

All of these characteristics are lacking in online social network destinations. It’s almost if the current batch of social network sites has all the nuance and complexity of a junior high home room class:

“Are you my friend?’

“Do you like me?”

“Do you like me like me?”

The argument continues by declaring the risk with model: younger generations could see these social networks as models for actual social relationships – rather than the mediated relationship they are – and we have a generation of sociopaths who require every aspect of every relationship to be explicitly declared to simply feel loved and wanted.

I’m sympathetic to the argument and I’d be all up for grabbing the pitchforks and torches except….

Have you watched a program (drama, comedy, talk, ‘reality’, ‘news’, anything really) on television or watched a movie lately?

Pick anything.

Guilty of the exact same crime.

And so much worse.

At least online – the people have a chance at changing the system to more accurately describe their relationships. They have a chance to use online interactions as a compliment and extension of offline interactions.

In broadcast media – there’s no chance. All the dysfunctional, psychotic, asocial behavior is frozen in. Ready for replaying over and over again. Never changing, learning, or improving.

While it once made me cringe to imagine a generation growing up on throwing sheep at each other in Facebook, it now terrifies me to imagine a generation of people modeling their social relationships off Power Rangers, daytime dramas, ’24’, Oprah, American Idol, and just about anything sold on a DVD.

Bring on the friend requests and thown sheep.

1. I think it was Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, Clay Shirky, or someone similar. I can’t find a link right now, does this sound familiar to you?

“I WANT to be enthused about things like Myspace, and Facebook, and Second Life, and iLike…In every case, I feel like people are blindly giving away value, and not getting enough in return. What do you get from these websites that you can’t get on your own? What do they do for you that you can’t do for yourself? The real purpose of all of them seems… to me, to be convincing people to give up personal information so that information can be sold to businesses, or otherwise used to market products. They are SPAM factories.” – Rusty Dubose

Rumor has it that Microsoft is about to purchase 5% of Facebook for $500 million.

Let’s put those numbers against the stats on Wikipedia’s Facebook page:

($500,000 * 20) / 34,000,000 active members = $294.11764 / active member.

No, I don’t think most “active members” get $300 of “free” value out of Facebook, MySpace, or Pownce.

Maybe LinkedIn….more likely Twitter.

The free blog their cousin set up for them on the server in his basement – absolutely.

My only issue with A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web is that it seems to assume a silo.

Cause, why else would it be needed?

If I always have full control (i.e. installing and maintaining a wordpress install on my own servers – not at wordpress.com) why would I need beg for freedom?

Just asking.

I support the premise, but I’d rather see “social”-ness added to existing open software.