Social Netwoking 2.0

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Well, over the last few days after reading about my new found
intrest in web 2.0 and especially Social networking 2.0, i
am just left wondering at amount of change what it can bring
to people's life. Not only about the change but also
a pardagim shift is on verge on how business will be
executed. But some queries have propped up in my curious
mind which i need to get answered first to be sure
about Social networking's future.
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Well, social Networking's literal meaning is joining the society as a whole.

Lets see the aim of different stake holders in Social networking websites
1. End users : Make a full network of friend, family and business contacts.Linked and benifitted form huge society. Possible only when whole internet socitey is integrated.
2. Advertisers : product or service advertsied to the max audience possible.
Possible only when whole internet socitey is integrated.
3. Platform owner - getting maximum number of users to their website so more data and hence more Adv. Possible only when whole internet socitey is integrated.

But as of now the ,the popularity and strength of social networks is heavily based on geographical region.

Facebook - canada and US
Orkut - India and brazil
Myspace - Russia and US

Once a user is dedicated and have his social network established on one platform why the person will try to go on another one. Barring a few, probably the people who like to date or get a location changed ? (Intersection of active users on the big 4 platforms will help me to affirm my assumption). So, if my assumption is right given the above demographical trend there can never be full social networking untill "the platforms make data available to each other".
This is possible in 2 ways
1. M&A of 2-3 big platforms
2. Import- Export of friend list: Making platforms open to allow exporting user list from one platform to another. The very few things that i checked on orkut while i joined it, was to get the friend list exported for my use.

Till this does not happen the actual social networking is never possible and the purpose is forfieted. So, the end users are not fully satisfied here.

Next, the open API's of platform is a big talk especially a lot of ho halla was there after google opened it.There is going to be a lot of apllications developed for orkut. Cool !!!!

So, we will have 'n' different application doing the same thing by the same developer for 'n' different platforms. Crazy isn't it? So the application developer isn't happy either with huge work around and investment.

My Conclusions
What i want to suggest is, if every stakeholder wants the maximum number of possible users, why not to share the data. And what Tim O'rielly said was "it is just data, stupid". So, never hestitate to share it. And what i feel will be left unique is how one platform handles that data, the experince it provides to its end users and probably create there own unique applications to retain their customer's. In coming years i see the User data to be common on each platform.

what say guys ? Let me know if i need some trashing on this article .....