Peter Csathy raises a question that leads me to a very contrarian view.

Is Video Interaction a Next Big Thing in Social Networking?
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Borrowing a page from Luca, today I ask a different question -- is video interaction a next logical and powerful way to extend the social networking experience? Specifically, can video (including live "click to call" video interaction among members in a community, as well as video messages -- i.e., click to record video to augment your member profile or send personalized video messages to others) take social networking to another level?

Every time I hear, or use, the phrase "social networking" my stomach rolls. Peter's question is quite legitimate in the context of social networks, but having watched the YASN (Yet Another Social Network) through Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, MySpaces, Facebook, and all the others I've forgotten really begs another view.

These are all contrived networks of friends, which leads me to point out that I began my online social network more years ago that I can remember. My first iteration social network involved the telephone. Rather than profiles, my friends were given numbers that I could dial and interact with them. Later it moved to computer bulletin boards. I used the telephone to "talk" to them. Still later it reached into Compuserve forums and a new tool called email. When Compuserve introduced gateways to the rest of the world, email became a global social networking tool. Usenet news groups were also a social networking tool.
 
Today we seem to rigidly define social networking in the context of which service has the most users today. I'll taske the position that the Internet (with the big I) is the only social network that matters. The Internet isn't about protocols and programs. It isn't about services. It's about the people at the ends and the connections we make.

A while back I made the observation that *my* space is much larger than MySpace. *My* space is a global Internet filled with blogs, email, wikis, usenet, discussion forums and thousands of pockets that are communities of interest. It encircles the globe and touches millions of people today. And yet the whole Internet, this global network, fits inside my Treo in my shirt pocket. Yep, it's in there. The whole damn thing.

Video is already changing incrementally how we use my social network. Every advance in video technology becomes just one more small facet of how our real social network changes.

Click here for a link to my SightSpeed video message...

Technorati Tags: Video, social networks, YASN, Internet, unified communications