On the Pervasiveness of Social Networks

I was about to write something on LaTeX or on technical writing but while surfing (read: procrastinating) I observed how much the features on many social networks in a wide sense of the word overlap on many points. It feels like some of the strongest incentives -at least for me- of joining one or another of the social networks is to get in contact with people which are not present on platform I'm on and to benefit from features that others don't have. For instance, I have an account on Facebook -no, really!-, on Twitter (which I don't really use), on google mail, google reader, google talk and linkedin. I'm sure I omitted some but it does give an idea on the many account I survey on regular basis. Just to see some of the zones of overlapping, we see that all keep a list of contacts, although the Google platform seem to use a common one. They also offer the possibility, with various levels of necessity of exposing one's profile, i.e. name, interests, education, jobs, etc. There is some measures of unification but it seems limited to the consumption of links, for example for sharing with friends on facebook or adding rss feeds. What could possible make the situation simpler for users of multiple platforms? I am very reluctant to suggest imposing or pushing a standard since it seems like a nice path to technological stagnation. For now, I'm happy to leave the question open and see if my reader(s) (if any) have anything to say on that matter. Simon August 14, 2009 Zürich