Here we go with a quick rundown of each of the social networks I’m currently a part of and what is wrong and right with each one. Why bother beating about the bush here, we have needs they need to be fulfilled. There are problems and they need to be dealt with, shape up or close down.

Believe it or not most SocNet’s are simply extensions of USENET, don’t believe me stay tuned to find out. Don’t know what USENET is? I just died a little when you said yes… You should probably consult the oracle and reflect on your crime, By the By… You owe the oracle one cup of strong black coffee, and a bagel.

Just view them in this light. I’ve also begun to refer to each post i see about a new social network as YASN posts. Yet Another Social Network… you know its getting pretty thick in here, we need to start culling the herd. Weed out the sick and infirm and run with the strongest of the pack.

Twitter: The entire usenet structure is here. You have the informative, the inane, the funny and the crude. Everyone who you know, all the sites you read, even the people your mother warner you about. But it just doesn’t work at times. Sad thing is they were one of the first into the hyper connected micro blogging sphere and they dropped the ball, stepped on the ball and then kissed the pavement with surprising regularity. Yet everyone is here, or at least we think they are.

Needs: Fix the infrastructure. Plain and simple if twitter is up it is king. Its been said a million times before but it still rings true. People want twitter to work. But beyond that they need to find and work with a business model.

Also let me get notifications when people @ me via mobile and I’d be great. Not everyone has an iPhone.

AKA: Twitterville

People here: Twitterati, Twitterpeeps, Tweeps

NTK: Twitter fails so often the “fail screen” has a name… FailWhale. There are sites dedicated to him, and no one likes him… pity the failwhale… pitty twitter

Friendfeed: This is the same as subscribing to the forums you like, but instead of forums they’re people. Follow who you want and what they are doing and producing. It is a great service but more than a little unwieldy the sheer size and amount of data flowing makes it a bear to contain. Not really sure you could label this micro blogging, but people are using it ask such.

Needs: Implement a weighed feed setting. Let me make my blog posts more visible than my tweets. I want people to see my awesome, fantastic new article about social networks before they see what i had for lunch. Split the feed into two views, weighted and chronological. Other than that this service is really growing on me.

Also needs more of a distinct user community, since they pull content from everywhere the community is amorphous at best.

AKA: FF

People Here: Are usually disgruntled with twitter, Ex-twitriots

Plurk: NKOTB reference. This is the Alt hierarchy, its where everyone is silly and most of the topics could be filed under other in the cabinet. For some reason, either its the silly name, the wonky interface or the characters who signed up first. This is the morning zoo of the SocNet Craze. Emoticons, dancing banana’s, and Karma make this a unique place to visit. Plurk is an experience to say the least. Someone needs to explain the headless mascot to me…

Needs: Let me have a view where I can see the threads I have commented in. You presented us with the ability called cliques which enables us to send messages to a subset of people. How about you extend that to creating a view just for the clique. SO i can check up on my Philly Locals, my Techpodcast compatriots and the wild and wacky others at a glance for each. Lastly you need to work on the mobile interface via SMS, i don’t want to navigate a page i want to send a message and have it plurked. Otherwise the word lends itself to too many euphemisms.

AKA: Plurkville, Plurkistan, Purktopia

People Here: Plurkers, Pleeps, Plurkeratti, need help { I kid }

NTK: When Plurk goes down, they show the A-Team… ’nuff said

Pownce: Alt.Binaries plain and simple the ability to send files to masses has earned pownce and interesting place in the list. You can also comment on specific posts which is good but for the most part the community isn’t as vibrant. There are some hardcore powncers, but other than the core groups it suffers from an also ran status. Pownce also has something twitter can only dream of… a business model. There is an option for a paid pro status, gives you the ability to share bigger files and control more options. This is something that can’t be overlooked, because at the end of the day if you’re not making money the how do you stay online.

Needs: To form a Voltron like creature with Plurk and everyone else it can grab to build a user base to take down Twitter as the population king. Its a good service but needs a more robust mobile as well.

AKA: the other one

People Here: are probably just this side of getting DCMA notices. Share files, sure your not supposed to share other people’s IP but it happens.

Jaiku:To be honest I’m there but i don’t use it. I don’t know too many people who do. Perhaps its because i started in the twitter camp. Guest Blogging opportunity here, submit an article to me reviewing Jaiku in the same vein as the rest of this piece and I’ll post it with a link back to your site. I don’t want to do the service wrong I just don’t use it too much. It took me a bit to get an invite to the network, whereas twitter was open from the start.

Needs: People, and a description. And an Apology from me.

Britekite: There is no direct correlation i can find to a usenet function which covers everything they do. But these guys are on the ball. They respond to people when they complain about features, they plug into twitter, by posting notifications to twitter directly. They have almost all the features I asked for in Plurk and twitter. You can subscribe to threads, get notifications when people talk to you or about you sent direct to your phone. You can also limit when alerts get sent to you by time, a great feature which prevents the 3 am wakeup txt.

To top this all off they allow you to check in at different locations, get notifications when others are near. Your pictures get tagged by your last checkin. Its all very awesome.

Needs: To smack Verizon around. For some reason Verizon won’t allow SMS messages to this service. Its a pain if you’re like me an have Verizon. You can still send pics and notes via email but the notes don’t always get through. You also need to be able to move pics and events from place to place. I tried to check in at the ballpark one day, it didn’t work but when I sent a picture it ascribed the picture to being at my office. Trust me if i could work at the ballpark I would, but I don’t.

AKA: BK, have it your way?

NTK: Since it piggybacks off of twitter for the majority of the community there isn’t to much of a Britekite centric community yet. But if i had to place bets against twitter, i would bet on Britekite over any of the other apps, they have the features and, they have the mobile support, for the most part.

I hope you enjoyed the rundown of the different services which are currently rising above the din of the masses.

Today I was made aware of a new twitter clone called Identi.ca. Based entirely on open source tech they could end up being the dark horse in all this, as they don’t have any of the features yet but they can build them and more that we haven’t even dreamt of yet with the community’s help. Mostly people are stopping by to collect their user names right now. But this platform could explode, or implode. Late entires and people are tired of jumping around.

Join us next time when we go over the content stream SocNets, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, Ponsterous, ect