Social Networking 2.0 ...

Yesterday, as I strolled through the IBM Lotus Social Software space in Second Life, I was struck by the way that Tell Us What Sucks is part of an evolution in social networking, as we move from the mobbed and unnavigable one-size-fits-all sites like MySpace into targeted social networking spaces that serve specific purposes -- into Social Networking 2.0. (I'm not the first to coin that -- Murli Ravi talked about it in late December, the first reference I can find to SN 2.0 used as I mean it, although others may have beaten him to it.)

The IBM space, hyped in a recent New York Times piece, was slow in terms of people traveling through, and in terms of anything going on. But chatting with others in the space convinced me that people recognize that social networking is a valid tool for specific business uses. In response to questions, people told me that they could foresee a time soon when they would have several social networking spaces, one or more for work, one or more for their personal lives. That's Social Networking 2.0: goodbye to the MySpaces, where everyone goes for everything in their lives, and hello to niche spaces like us.

We're the social networking space around the antisocial in life, the things that suck. We envision ourselves not building a big community of people, but serving as people's outlet for ranting, complaining, finding out how many agree with their views on a company, a movie, a retail chain. It may take a little time for this phenomenon to take off, but we're ready.