Well if you aren't into the whole Social Networking craze then take heart because according to Lance Ulanoff of PCMag.com, "My Space, Second Life, and Twitter Are Doomed." He believes the hype and the fate of these programs is similar to the same fate of the millions of personal web pages created in the 1990's.

His theory is that My Space, Second Life, Twitter are "huge, ugly, unmonitored, unrestrained, and pointless." I am sure there are other's out there in the library community and elsewhere who are thinking the same thing. I am not sure if they feel exactly the same or they are just suffering from what I call Burnout 2.0.

If it is true, and all of these and other programs are doomed for failure, I have to ask the question, "Is that necessarily a bad thing?" The Discovery Channel is the most popular television channel in my house. My four year old son and I love watching Dinosaur Planet. His eyes are riveted to the screen as he watches dinosaurs, eat, hunt, migrate, hatch and die. He has learned that birds and dinosaurs are closely related and on some level he has learned about evolution.

So, I have to say that Lance is probably right. These programs are doomed, they will die off. When, who knows. He believes sooner rather than later. Me? I don't know. What I find more interesting is what will take their take their place. What will evolve from these social networking tools? What will these "dinosaurs" of the Internet become?

Labels: Social Software, Technology