I posted a retort to Fred Wilson almost giddy extrapolation of the numbers of email systems out there today and how they dwarf the existing social networks - in terms of size of the ’so-called’ social graphs. I called it “Why email and IM systems ain’t social networks” (don’t you just LOVE my candid use of vernacular?

In my retort I attack the notion that just cause these email systems have huge numbers, that does NOT make them a social network. We shouldn’t treat humans like cattle which do what we want them to do. We have to realize that humans are migratory beasts and are going to continue to migrate to the compelling experiences du jour.

However - in my haste to retort, what I missed was that there’s something else going on here - a sub-text trend which I’d like to connect to my meme of ‘bringing social to software‘.

You see what Fred gets right - and he’s backs it up in a comment he left to me - is that email is ALL about people. Connecting to people, communicating with people and keeping track of your ‘peeps’. So the trend that Saul Hansell wrote about (so-called InBox 2.0), which Marshall Kirkpatrick followed up on and which Fred Wilson - and many others flogged about as well - is in fact partially true - if you take it in the context of:

- all software is about people - in one sense or other

- email CERTAINLY is about people

- social features (friending, groups, personal pages, widgets) are becoming the norm

- and social features will spread to all forms of software; Intranets, productivity software, eCommerce, legacy apps - EVERYTHING - so why not email as well?

One thing I certainly do believe is that people feeds, and keeping track of certain people via RSS - is going to be a huge trend. I’ve been pitching that for years - and it took Facebook’s News Feeds, FriendFeed and Yahoo’s new plans to put this idea into vogue. That’s coolio - doesn’t matter where it comes from - as long as it becomes the norm.

Looking back - I think Fred’s emphasis on the SIZE of email and IM systems as being the #1 reason why they’re competing with social networks - was just a VC talking from his VC POV.

The essence of this - is that people connecting to people is at the core of what we all mean by social networking - and that list of relationships (eg. social graphs) is the new battlefield.

But we’ve known that for a while - right? Ever since we created the People’s DNS. Thanks Joel!

That’s why the IM wars were waged. That’s why the social networking wars are waging today. And that’s why we ain’t done yet with wars - cause that’s what humans do - right? They fight for their beliefs.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 8:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.