LooseSuits

Can we stop forcing people to sign up to sites to do the most mundane things (such as viewing pictures at a higher resolution, only to then have them watermark'd)?

I don't care how big social networking is now, I don't care if making a login system means you know Rails any better than the guy who simply makes a blog engine. I don't even care if making users login helps you get traffic on Google.

If your site does nothing of merit to the Internet, or anything else: I'm not signing up just to do ONE thing.

Furthermore, I'm done checking out the same social networks that my friend's sign up to, only to talk to them somewhere else. I've got instant messenger, so do they. I've got Facebook, so do they. That's redundant.

What's more redundant? Fidg't, an address book for all your social networks.

You've got to be kidding me, right? The Internet is not becoming social, the internet has BEEN social. We're just figuring out ways to make communication more dynamic, and quicker. So you know how to make something cool, huh? Here's an idea: don't jump on the bandwagon, build a bandcar. No one owns wagons anymore except V-dub owners, and even they have motors.

So here's a call to action to all of the social network pundits and engineers: do something NEW. FaceBook isn't different from MySpace at all. The entire premise there was the idea of only allowing college students to sign up, and allowing them to share unheard of numbers of pictures. Then they messed that up by letting anyone sign up, now we've got groups out there for the most ignorant of purposes.

Example: Jamie joined the group "I Shouldn't be telling you this, but I'm really Spiderman".

The group's description:
This is really hard for me, but I have to let my secret out. I climb walls. I swing on webs. I save people from manic, tortured scientists who've experimented on themselves.

Come on..seriously.

I'm not against Social Networking at all, it's a great concept, some of the core features we see replicated help propel the Internet and the way in which we intuitively interact with data. But can we please try and think about some of the things we do just for the sake of calling it a social network?

Like I said: Don't rebuild the bandwagon, build a bandcar.