A thought stirring article on the history of social networks by a friend of mine as guest author on GigaOm.
By reviewing the past, Brian is able to focus on the elements and not the players. He makes a good comment on what types of companies are best suited to capitalize on where social networking is going.
Brian is the guy who gave me the chance to switch out of biomedicine and into telecom. He’s seen it all and is pretty good at forecasting where things are going.
Link: Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s – GigaOM:
While I think commercial social networks will continue to be popular, it is dangerous to project future growth from past trends. There are several important trends already underway that, while they are good for social networking as a whole, will undermine proprietary commercial services.
