Lately I feel I have more social networks then friends. As a matter of fact, I know more social networks then people. Spooky? Scary!

A social network for meeting business colleagues…Wait…. 3!
A social network for bookmarking websites… Wait… 5!
A social network for sharing media….Wait…15!
A social network for sharing social networks….You get the point.

It seems like every trivial detail in life makes a good enough reason for not only one, but a few competitive social networks. The pseudo-differentiators are ridiculous (”my social network is available offline on your PDA”….who cares???). There are simply far too many social networks out there. We tend to dismiss that with hope for natural selection, but I am growing weary of the very concept. My attention span for chasing and maintaining social networks is very narrow. I have no desire to re-live the IM no interopability nightmare (”Oh you’re on Yahoo? too bad, I’m on AIM”). Thanks, I’m skipping this round.

The abundance of so many networks is a problem by itself. For a social network to be successful it needs to be socially known, something we are all familiar with. Maybe not MySpace but I’d set the minimum bar at del.icio.us.

Do less web based social networking folks. Get out more and meet real friends!