by msweeks
Sydney-based IBSG Director, heading up the IBSG public sector team in Asia Pacific for Cisco. Co-author of the Connected Republic 2.0 More about msweeks
Discussion
Be the first to start the discussion with a comment.Social networks the platform of the future
Australian business and technology analyst and writer Ross Dawson (Trends in the Living Networks - http://rossdawsonblog.com/) has some interesting reflections on the growing significance of social networking as the dominant platform for commuication and value.
Here's his brief comments - http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/09/microsoft_faceb.html. A couple of quick excerpts:
"Value is increasingly seen as shifting to social networks. When News Corp bought MySpace 2 ½ years ago for $580 million, I pointed out that what it was buying was the positioning at the interstices of people's relationships. Media - as in the flow of information - is increasingly between people rather than in a hub and spoke arrangement, which makes social networking platforms central to value creation."
"Social networks are rapidly becoming central to people's interaction with the online world." Really - not sure everyone would agree with that yet, but perhaps we are launched on a trajectory whose outcome will justify that claim eventually?
"This is all about the platform of the future. The computing platforms of the past have been dominated by Windows. More recently the level of the dominant and meaningful platform is the web-based application. It is quite likely that the level of the platform that can extract the most value in the future is at or close to the level of the social network."
Thing that struck me is the link between these insights and the lask post I blogged about former Australian Labor Party leader Mark Latham who suggested real reform in politics was always going to be difficult because it had to be grounded in people and relationships, not institutions.
Maybe there's a link between Mark's political insight and Ross Dawson's focus on social networks. If that's right, then the idea of "government by Facebook" isn't so silly, perhaps, except that it would mean something much more profound than putting a few announcements on a static and highly controlled facebook page.