Social Networking Features are Toilets
In the future, social networking features will be like toilets.
Charlene Li is quoted in The Economist as saying:
Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.”
She’s right, and I agree with this. But I’m going to put out a different version of the same idea.
Future social networks, or rather those features we currently assign to the idea of “social networks,” will be like toilets. Today, if you rent a hotel room in the US, you expect a few things: a bed, maybe a TV, a desk, a chair, a few coat hangers, and a bathroom complete with a shower/tub and a toilet.
It could be the sexiest hotel room in the world, but without a toilet? Nothing. Just a non-starter.
I think the features we expect (a social graph of sorts, reputation, messaging, and value facilitation) either will be there and we’ll have the option to participate in as much or as little of it as we wish, or we just won’t stay there.
Toilets. As said by Mr. McGuire in The Graduate, toilets.
Photo credit, Delgoff (and there are some funny snaps in that set).
