Social networks should be built around the friends you know in real life...right? That's the prevailing notion behind today's most popular social networks, at least. Sync up with friends, meet their friends, establish relationships, share information - everyone's happy!
Not so fast. What about your hairdresser's cousin you met that one time who's totally obsessed with Farmville? Or the old high school classmate you haven't seen in 10 years who posts endless photos of "potty training victories?" Are these the kinds of "interactions" you set out to find when you joined Facebook?
I don't think so.
Social networks today simply aren't social. Social implies a conversation -- an actual back and forth -- but mostly what Facebook and Twitter offer is a way for people - or "friends" - to talk at you.
Makes me nostalgic for the good old days of AOL chatrooms, one of the best platforms for meeting new people to this day. AOL's topic-oriented chatrooms let a mix of strangers and friends discuss anything they wanted, and were presented with a clear topic name.
My favorite was the "Philly" chatroom (go Eagles!). I happened to already be friends with a few of the folks who joined to chat, but I also met a lot of new people, and even ended up dating one of them. All because we were bound by this mutual interest: the city where we lived.
Did we always talk about Philadelphia? No. But every person who entered the discussion did so with some type of vested interest in Philly - whether they live there, used to live there, knew someone who lived there, or wanted to meet someone who lived there.
What we have today, by contrast, is cluttered and frenetic.
Twitter lacks proper discovery tools to find people who are interested in the same things you are. If someone follows Ashton Kutcher and you do too - great - but that doesn't mean you'd necessarily want to spark up a conversation with that person. For all you know, that person follows Kutcher to heckle him, while you think he's god's gift to acting.
Twitter isn't social because you can't drill down to who and what matters. Its "system," which is basically no system at all, is flawed and takes a lot of time and work to make it usable. It is broken.
Now as for Farmbook - I mean Facebook, the site is built on the notion that you not only know a lot of people, but that you're interested in meeting, talking to, or interacting with the people that they know.
But that concept is fundamentally flawed. Just because you're friends or acquaintances with someone doesn't mean you share personal interests with them. I personally have a lot of friends who play Farmville, but I have zero interest in the game, nor do I care to be bombarded with a billion posts (with comments!) about the game progress.
I'm not saying Facebook is going away. It's a great tool to manage friends, content and bring people together in social circles. But it's not enough, and it certainly doesn't empower long-lasting, meaningful, or more important, new friendships and interactions. It's Phonebook 2.0. It's a database of information about people you know in one way or another.
But it's not a social network. So what is?