Critical mass and social network fatigue « Jon Udell

A timely reality check from Jon Udell (read the full post for more): 

Recently Gary McGraw echoed Ben Smith’s 1991 observation. “People keep asking me to join the LinkedIn network,” he said, “but I’m already part of a network, it’s called the Internet.”

Now of course LinkedIn offers protocols and features that the open Net doesn’t, at least not yet, and the same is true for all the specialized overlays that we call social networks. But there’s a ton of duplication in those layered protocols and features. If we can’t factor out a bunch of the duplication, I think social network fatigue becomes the major hurdle standing in the way of reaching of critical mass.

Source: Critical mass and social network fatigue « Jon Udell