"Social software can be defined as software that is better when our friends are using it." Or if there are easy ways to make contact with the types of people you want to get to know. Unfortunately, the bulletin-board aspect of social networks means that it is difficult to meet people beyond a "you look hot" comment.
"I’d love to add friends to my Flickr account, add my links to del.icio.us, browse digg for the latest big stories, customise the content of my Netvibes home page and build a MySpace page. But you know what? I don’t have time and you don’t either…" This is a huge problem for me and people like me. Who has time to monitor every site?
I also see a real fragmentation of internet presence due to different profiles. How do you reconcile a party-girl MySpace profile with a no-nonsense businessperson's LinkedIn profile? The result is a schizoid internet personality, detrimental to relationship-building.
My Solution
What I would like to see is one application that manages your profile and contact lists. All other social apps can grab your info from that central repository. Permissions, watch lists and recent comments could all be seen from the central space.
In the meantime, I'll stick to my current strategy of limiting my social networking to two services - which is all I can handle right now.
