What to expect of social networking?

The two basic uses of social networking sites are : a) to promote your art, professional services, or business, and b) to fill your existence with ego-stroking, attention-whoring frenzy. Some people already succeed at b) with constant email, talking loudly in their cell phone, and dozens of IM windows -- such is the best hope of the has-been, the jock, and the cheerleader.

OK, there is a third use, for those too afraid to make acquaintances and find friends in person, or who live in a car culture, where you live in a concrete box, move around locked inside a steel box, and spend the day in an air-conditioned cubicle. Such people may find online someone to share an interest or value with. Because approaching the girl you fancy at the bookstore is too scary, talking to strangers at a tennis club is so difficult, and striking a philosophical conversation in a bus is unheard of.

OK, there is a fourth justification, finding some half-way path between professional and personal connections. Especially important when the only word one knows to describe a human relationship is "friend".

All in all, pathetic.

But wait, there is worse.

All social networking sites are driven by fads. The people who frequent such places are addicted to change for its own sake. No matter how successful they (Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, ...) become, any new, fun, cool social tool will attract the exact same crowd. Unfortunately for Facebook (in particular), the type of audience that has given that company the appearance of being wildly successful is precisely the type lacking in depth and loyalty. Further, such networks' very need for continual, exponential growth is going to strangle and kill them, the same way the mortgage crisis is about to crash the entire real estate market -- because they based their survival on the notion that everything (number of customers, price, demand, income, real estate value) will trend upward forever, and so they leveraged themselves by running to the end of a very very thin stick.

On a tangent, how anyone can believe that houses all go up in value over time, that is a question nobody dares to ask. Nobody holds such beliefs about shoes, cars, food... not yet, not yet, I suppose.