Social Network Fatigue Coming?

mrspin offers the opinion of ZDNet blogger Steve O'Hear that users may soon tire of social networks — if they don't open up and embrace standards allowing greater interoperability among the different networks. O'Hear writes: "Unless the time required to sign-in, post to, and maintain profiles across each network is reduced, it will be impossible for most users to participate in multiple sites for very long." In an earlier post he went into more detail on the same subject, with extensive opinions from four creators of social networks. A contrary data point comes from the Apophenia blog, in a post noting the tendency among young users to create ephemeral profiles, and not to mind at all if they have to re-enter data. "Teens are not looking for universal anything; that's far too much of a burden if losing track of things is the norm." What does Slashdot think — is data portability among social networking sites a big deal or not?

Comments

How Profitable are these Sites Anyway?

[MrNash]

For all of the popularity these social networking sites have right now, are they all that profitable yet, or are they still largely dependent on venture capital? I've yet to figure out how these sites can demand any meaningful amount of money from advertisers. The subject matter is extremely broad, is often times used as a promotional tool for other sites or businesses, and it seems that the demographic who most enjoys these sites is in an age group that doesn't / can't buy things online. If someone can explain how and if these sites are running under their own steam (and doing well), as opposed to being propped up by investors, that would be fabulous.