The Big Bang of Social Networking 
is a piece by Jim Dwyer in The New York Times that will likely be a subject of a session today or tomorrow at IIW. So here are a few thoughts of my toward that discussion…
- All of us had social networks before Facebook, Diaspora and Ello existed. We still do. They’re in our heads, hearts, contact lists and address books.
- Facebook, Diaspora* and Ello are silo’d commercial services. They do serve many social purposes, of course, and a few very well, or they wouldn’t be so popular.
- If we want real social networks online, we need to start with our own genuine personal ones.
- To be VRM, they need to support independence and engagement. They should also be substitutable in the same way that, say, browsers and email apps and services are substitutable.
It is essential to start outside the box of thinking that says everything needs to be a service. Inside that box we risk thinking only of other calf-cow solutions to calf-cow problems.
Facebook and Ello are both cows. Even though one doesn’t advertise at us, we’re still calves in its fenced farm.
Unless, of course, we can take our social graphs away with us, to use on our own, or with some substitutable service.
VRM social network solutions to the problems of calf-cow designs need to be first person technologies. At that link, I explain,
Only a person can use the pronouns “I,” “me,” “my” and “mine.” Likewise, only a person can use tools such as screwdrivers, eyeglasses and pencils. Those things are all first person technologies. They were invented for individual persons to use.
I suggest we start with address books and calendars. Those could not be more personal, yet more social. And, far as I know, nobody has yet done them in a way that’s useful for scaffolding the successor to Facebook on top of them. But that shouldn’t stop us.
* [Later…] This was a copy/paste/rush error. In fact Diaspora is quite VRooMy. The Wikipedia entry makes that clear.