I've been doing some thinking about social networks on the net and what they provide. People like to communicate and share opinions, tips, pictures, gossip and other nuggets of information. Before the internet most of us were limited in how many people we could reach, but now you have the potential to reach anyone with internet access. Inevitably this has led to a glut of junk out there, but there is gold to be found too. Professional writers are likely to be more consistent in their output, but they can't cover everything.

Those of us with the technical aptitude can host our own web site with complete control. Most people will prefer to use a hosted service that does the hard work for them so that they can concentrate on the content. The other thing these services can provide is the ability to connect to other people, but generally only those who are also registered with that service. In order to reach some of my friends I have joined some of these services with varying degrees of success.

There are lots of sites that allow people to link up, but provide limited options on communication. Slashdot lets you link to people, but only to see what comments and posts they have and with no way to know when there are updates. delicious lets you track other peoples' bookmarks, but there is no way to post other content.

Twitter offers a minimal system of short messages, with the option to follow any other member without the need for them to reciprocate, unless you decide that you only want friends to read what you like. identi.ca is a promising open source alternative that I'm finding useful.

Of the sites that provide a wide range of social options my favourite is still Multiply. From the start it has been about keeping in touch with people you know rather than building a huge network of strangers. You can post text, images, video and audio with complete control over who can access it. I use it to post pictures for friends and family with the option to restrict access. They get an email when I do so. It has worked well for me for a few years, but I find the others less enthusiastic about posting stuff themselves. The site recently announced reaching the ten million member mark.

Facebook has been getting lots of attention in the media and is growing at an incredible rate. I joined because some friends were there, but have found it disappointing. It aims to create a 'walled garden' subset of the internet. I guess it is safe in that you don't have to tell anyone your email address and can block anyone from your profile. But it is so shut down that you can't see anything there without joining. Allowing access to any aspect of your profile seems to be limited to all friends or everyone and tracking what has been updated is difficult.

Some people consider some of these sites to be evil for various reasons. I accept that they can abuse your data to feed you with advertising, but that's how they make a living and it's not much different to what various other businesses do. I accept some loss of privacy in exchange for the benefits of loyalty cards and gain from recommendations on various shopping sites based on previous purchases. Some of the methods these sites use may also be suspect, but I'm not sure if they are interesting in anything beyond making money.

Some people are trying to exploit the social sites as ways of reaching an audience for their art. They can provide a direct link between artist and fans. Steve Lawson is a good example of this. He is now passing on his experience to others.

Personally I'd like to see better ways for us all to be able to manage our own data, but still have the benefits of networking. Simple options exist such as RSS feeds to track blog updates and comment systems. I ought to investigate things like trackback that give feedback of cross-blog comments. I would like to be able to post comments on other blogs and get updates on follow-ups without having to subscribe to lots of feeds or rely on emails. Are there standards for this that I am missing out on? I realise that my blogging platform is not the most advanced, but I don't intend to change that any time soon.

For now I will deal with the frustrations of the big social networks as a way to track others and make them aware of my blog posts, which will remain my primary means of self-expression. My hope it to reach a small audience who may be able to help me to reach more people, including the non-techies, using open standards. Thanks for reading.