Another Quiet Day

Why Ryan Carson Doesn't Use Social Software

Ryan Carson says this here thing over at Vitamin:

I’d love to add friends to my Flickr account, add my links to del.icio.us, browse digg for the latest big stories, customise the content of my Netvibes home page and build a MySpace page. But you know what? I don’t have time and you don’t either…

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The article and the discussion are well deserving of a read, but Ryan's criticisms suffer from a few problems.

None of them substantial, as his points about the current trend-darlings we generally call social software are all valid and to the point.

But his critique seems to be more about wanting to take the field of social software and divide it into two groups:

1. Those Ryan Carson likes.

2. Those that Ryan Carson doesn't like.

Social software is deserving of many more niches than that. Each one catering to their audiences and enabling them to create their own community and collaborate on some level.

The fact that Ryan finds some more useful than others doesn't mean that there is some sort of fundamental difference between those two groups other than that he's a part of the communities of one and not the other group.

If you dig into his text you'll find that the key point he's driving towards (I think, it's not that clear) is that we need more variety in social web apps.

Which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Baldur Bjarnason – 23/8/06