The first generation social software was IM, the second generation involves the likes frienster.com, orkut.com, tribe.com, linkedin.com. Both model any relationship as ‘friends’ and deem it static but as we all know that in the realworld there are many so many different types of relations out there colleagues, collegemates, neighbours, acquaintances etc. Putting them all into a single bracket of ‘friend’ is inflexible. Also relationships have a life-span for example relationships are newly formed, they grow strong, they weaken, some of them are forgotten and some of them even get broken.
The next generation social software will have to take care of some these. I see blogs as the key component in such a software. Think of the entries in the blogroll of a blog !!
Noticed recently that some blogs use blogrolling for maintaining the blog entries. Now maintaining your blogroll becomes so easy & simple. A kind of service that I had been looking out for so many months now.
3rd generation social software
mtrajan.com 