Two things struck me in particular:

• Web2.0 exhaustion. I wonder what that will look like - The patter of little Twitter feet? To what?
• Network collision. Collision - as fusion, or fission?

It is exciting to see the web analytics and marketing convergence. This is clearly where Google will dominate - and I'd like to be a fly on the wall at Yahoo right now... Mark, are you watching this?

Finally, the "productization" of search platforms is a major bummer - as if the analytics and targeted web search results isn't bad enough...

So much of this gets back to many strategies we worked thru with clients over 10 years ago. When either the tech, design or marketing people were in charge of the companies web site, we’d always, always ask...what do you want from the web site, and what do your visitors want from the web site?

For the multiple "identities" people have online at Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in, My Space, and dozens of other high profile web sites, what do people want/expect from their participating there?

The analytics and marketing blend is rather bottom line I guess. The biz wants your money. Productizing search results started with a client of ours as they launched Goto, which became Overture, which became Yahoo Search.

Me, I don't give a hoot about having loads of "friends" on Facebook. What does a friend on Facebook mean?

How can people and orgs operate online to get more and more things accomplished? That, I think is interesting. How can one get more done, in less time online...is interesting. Sure, I'll spend 6-12 hours online at Ned a day, but there will always be a few "power users", how can Ned also best serve those that spend 15 minutes a day, or 30 minutes a week?

Let's assume people/members might want money for work or their projects. Moving that aside as kind of a given, what else to people/orgs want? What else to people and orgs want to make happen online?

Mark wrote:

Me, I don't give a hoot about having loads of "friends" on Facebook. What does a friend on Facebook mean?

Well, you should for one reason only: the word "friend" should be replaced with "communications node," which is both monetizable in the right circumstance, as well as a good indicator of the communication "clout" of any one member in the network.

The term "friend" engenders a level of trust that unlocks certain technology possibilities in a site like facebook - which includes the capacity to send bulk messages, track activity, make recommendations, etc.

the relationship that i think is important - and i'd really love to see some analytics on this or have $50k to run the study - is conversion: what percentage of those "nodes" cum friends can be converted into "action-takers" at any level: from forwarding an email to giving $10 to signing a petition - whatever.

It stands to reason that the more friends a "politically active" user has, the more influence they wield.

But this cannot always be the case. Some people have just that one issue they stand for. Others will only take certain kinds of action (or, more importantly, will never take certain kinds of action). Etc etc.

About Ned: do you consider it to be a social network? Is there a better term for "a network of potentially willing collaborators?" Add to that a superstructure across which this network could speak to others, and you could have a very nifty engine for change via the net...

I just want to add a quick comment here so I'll remember this discussion thread.

Here's Beth Kanter's post on the article.

I do want to add my two cents, as soon as I'm able to think somewhat coherently about it. I think it would be great for someone to give Lars 50K to do something with. The study Lars mention seems a sub-optimal use of his time. But the point about action taking is an important one, and one that makes me think that social networking is far from over.

Phil Jones had an interesting post on Facebook and social networks last fall. Later as the discussion progressed and Facebook started Beacon he cried "uncle" conceding Umair Haque's contention that "Facebook is evil." Still, Phil's point about the importance of "walled gardens" is pretty smart.

Why shouldn't I be able to start a company on Facebook by inviting someone to be my "employee"? Salary and contract requirements become part of the link meta-data.

Note that today, YASNs tend to offer a very restricted range of link-types and link meta-data. But, as Dave Winer has suggested, they ought to allow users and application developers to invent their own. In fact, that's got to come soon, either from FB or someone hoping to take them on. And when it does, we'll see YASNs become an instant construction kit for all kinds of "enterprise" software. Payroll, performance assessments, medical records, memos, time-sheets, tax-forms, work-flow : the whole paraphernalia of the bureaucratic enterprise will become widgetized as the firm turns itself inside-out.

>>I just want to add a quick comment here so I'll remember this discussion thread.<<

Don't forget the power of tags at Ned too.

Thanks Mark, tagging is powerful and I'm bad at it.

Social networking site Facebook could very well be "so 2007," as organizations move away from so-called "silly Web 2.0 trends" and toward common-sense business practices.

It's this perspective of "common-sense" business practices that gets me scratching my head.

God knows I don't know jack about business. Here's a the New Yorker cartoon:

“I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.” (One dog talking to another.)

Friends had a Springer Spaniel named Scutter. Scutter was a rockhound. He'd find a rock, smooth and rather flat, and then bark at it incessantly. Scutter was an endearing rascal and everyone who knew him loved him. Oh, but that damned barking!

I don't mean to be snide about Alan Pelz-Sharpe, but there's something "oh so common sense" about this analysis that doesn't really make sense to me. Pelz-Sharpe's career has been in the business of publishing really big expensive books that hardly anyone buys so they're really expensive. That he's had a long run in this niche tells me there's some common sense involved, but on the other hand I not buying it.

Umair Haque is now a discussion leader at Harvard Business Online. John Hagel has Edge Perspectives. What I'm wondering is whether what Haque and Hagel offer might also be called common sense business practices? Umair Haque at Harvard Business Online suggest that his ideas at least aren't considered crackpot.

There's something sneering in Alan Pelz-Sharpe, et al's analysis. It's as if they're saying: "Oh grow up and print it in a big fat book and charge a lot!" Something "so 1707" about their analysis.

So when Lars connects with it, I'm really curious about why my perspective could be so off?

I think that my perspective is colored with the rosy lens of thinking that commons based peer production is a really big thing. I haven't read enough and don't know enough, but still am placing my chips on what my friend Phil Jones calls the peeroshpere.

This Nicholas Carr piece (via Phil) is quite interesting because it's some push back against Yochai Benkler's ideas. And Benkler provides a fascinating response. Bekler let's Carr's accusations of cyber-utopianism roll off his back, and responds to the meat. But cyber-utopianism is an important issue. Ethan Zuckerman has written very intelligent critiques of these cyber-Utopian ideas, for example this piece. But often accusations of cyber-utopianism amount to name calling.

It seems to me that when it comes to commons based peer production the subject is like the old Buffalo Springfield lick "Something's happening here /what it is ain't exactly clear."

In other threads Lars has mentioned that he reads Thomas Barnett and others about warfare and how networking is changing our assumptions about it. That's hardly cyber-Utopian, indeed maybe dystopian! But these ideas are connected to the larger issue of peer production.

Phil wrote a great post TCP/IP vs the Dollar. In it he examines the question being ask about the social Web: "Where's the money." And Phil argues that the question: "Why the money?" is actually the more interesting one. He writes:

The more effective the internet and the web are at helping us communicate and co-ordinate, the less money will be involved. Because ultimately the economy is a communication network and money is its protocol.

The network is not the means to the end of money.

Instead, money and IP are rival protocols in rival networks which are means to the same end : that of articulating human labour to create more wealth for humanity. Money isn't wealth, it's just a kind of signal which can be used to help identify good ideas and channel more resources to them. On the internet we are increasingly finding alternative ways of identifying and signalling what things are worthwhile.

I really respect Beth Kanter. Somewhere along the line she wrote that she makes so little she qualifies for food assistance. Anyone who follows what she does, knows that she deserves a decent living. But figuring out how to mix up these two rival protocols isn't easy or smooth.

Beth's beat is the social Web and non-profits. Recently she's done a number of pieces about measuring ROI for non profits experimenting with the social Web. Importantly she recognizes that money is an insufficient measure.

Lars connected money to his "action takers" but also included a larger universe of actions. What would make his proposed study difficult is coming up with appropriate measures for the stuff other than money. We simply aren't used to counting such stuff. Linda is facing this difficulty straight on in her work and that's part of what makes her work so important.

Mark asked:

About Ned: do you consider it to be a social network?

This is a really good question. I tend to jumble up all the social Web as having a social networking aspect to it. But it is worthwhile to consider definitions and differences.

Phil points out that Umair Haque makes the important point that "markets, networks and communities are not the same thing." Then Phil writes:

In a market, virtues are freedom and openness to participation. In a network, virtues are primarily effective link-management and secondarily effective flows.

In the social media arena, I'm just not sure where to mark the boundaries between markets, networks and communities. My first reaction to Mark's question was: Yes I do consider Ned a social network. But I hardly think of Ned as a link-management tool.

In someways I think of Ned as a thinktank. And really given it's history as a tool set, that's doesn't seem so far off base. I also think of Ned as a community. Mostly , at this point I note Mark's questions and direction his thinking is taking and want to shout out: More of that!

John, as usual you've let about 20 beautiful puppets out of the spring box. So I'll just take a random jab at 1 or 2.

First I want to clarify something: When I read, ""silly Web 2.0 trends" I don't read silly Web2.0. There are certain trends related to the Web2.0 phenomenon that bear some scrutiny.

Second, about that common sense bit. Well, yes, there's something there that's a little rancid. Whatever. To quote Ratatouille's brother Remy famously put it, "If you can muscle past the gag reflex, it opens a world of culinary possibility."

So back to the larger point: when I hear "Facebook," I connect with an archetype. This archetype "social utility" not only has its application-developing devotees but many, many wannabe's as well. Take Razoo. Not that its a wannabe; maybe its something entirely different. But it definitely reflects a "struck with the Web2.0 virus" mindset of "market the network and they will come."

I hope, for all of our sake, that this craze is over. I had an image straight from "I Am Legend" in which those dripping-fang hoards of "infecteds" were really social network "frienders" who bite any piece of meat that has a voice. In fact, there seems to be this rule that when a network becomes consumed by "clicks" (read mouse activity) and not "taps" (read keyboard activity) its value as a social web of people sharing ideas and action declines.

So when these guys write that "silly trends" I breathe a sigh of relief. I can stop looking around for the "killer app" of social network sites and spend some time tending to my own garden, honing skills with mainstay Web2.0 tools like RSS, mailing groups, and focused discussion boards. Its where my "gut" is anyway.

Its easy in the social web world to get worried that one is not sending enough blinking hearts, zombie chomps, or "good karma, recommendations - whatever the ruse - there is this baked in pressure to waste time or else send the impression of indifference. I have to trust that those who don't receive these non-stop virtual platitudes know I still love and admire them, but at the end of the day have other stops to take along my train of thought...

So again, the indictment isn't on Web2.0, but "big" trends within this world, like fussy social networks that, like a good vampire will, suck vitality from people seeking to effect change - like the fox in pinocchio promising a field of gold bushes the next morning if they'll only spend time today planting gold coins in the field today.

Now, you want more hard-nosed analysis? Well, that's going to take some time - I don't have any data at my finger tips just now... But at an intuitive level, the article resonates.

I don't want hard-nosed analysis, your analysis is very relevant because it's experiential. I must learn to remember that when I begin a sentence: "I don't mean to be..." that I'm probably lying and would be well served to try to understand why I mean to be one way or another.

The problems you mention with Facebook are certainly ones we're all facing; it just seems like a Spam machine.

From a strategy stand point probably the biggest disconnect is the analysis having a short time horizon and my anxiously looking ahead. So the fault's with me.

The report talks about Facebook as a kind of "laboratory". I think that's realistic and there really are many more laboratories out there. When Mark wrote:

Is there a better term for "a network of potentially willing collaborators?" Add to that a superstructure across which this network could speak to others, and you could have a very nifty engine for change via the net...

I thought, yeah, more of that. To an extent I see a great deal of very promising experiments going on in Social media. But it also seems we haven't quite invented all the necessary part of the superstructure Mark is talking about. One of the points that Phil makes which is so important is that part of what we haven't invented is cultural and not technical. He's a coder, so is interested in the technical bits. It's quite heartening to see that he's got a bigger perspective which includes the cultural as a parameter for his technical work.

Umair Haque is leading discussions at Harvard Business Online. Today he asks:

But for now, I think it’s more important to use the Google and Superfuture mini-cases to discuss the deeper issue: that cheap interaction is reshaping advantage.

Can you see cheap interaction shaping and reshaping advantage in your industries? How do you think cheap interaction affects other sources of advantage, like scale and relationships?

These are important questions for business, and for non-profits. I like to see business seriously tackle such questions, but in many ways I suspect that social enterprises will come up with the more interesting answers-- well, interesting to me.

The fatigue is real. I don't quite know what to make of it, but it can't be ignored. I'm sure Danah Boyd's work is familiar to most people here. I love the tagline her blog: "Making connection where none previously existed." We really are headed into uncharted waters, and it seems to me there is not enough scholarly work being done.

John, you are mixing up Mark and myself perhaps. As I find the article resonates, I also find that it forces me think more about the networks that I do participate in...