Sick of reading about it? Or hearing how it is going change the way that people live and work, change the world? I am.

The Economist had a great article in their ‘The World in 2008’ issue called ‘The rediscovery of discretion’. The tag line is ‘Older people, too, will extend their social networks online without feeling awkward’. From the article:

In 2007 things got more complicated for the Xs. Thanks to Facebook, many middle-aged office types were expected to join in. But there was no rule-book for how to reject the “friend” request of a boss, or whether doing so was permissible at all. If not, should he be allowed to see the naked baby photos? While some Ys became more cautious after their excesses in 2006, many Xs began squirming in new forms of awkwardness in 2007.

This will change in 2008, as social-networking technology changes to fit human nature, rather than forcing human nature to fit the technology. The industry leaders in 2007 were really old-fashioned “walled gardens”. They came in generic templates, with the crucial sociological aspects—what sort of information to give on a profile, for instance—pre-determined by programmers. Yes, they allowed users to customize their start pages, but so did the walled gardens of the early 1990s, online services such as AOL or CompuServe.

They point to a service called Ning which is co-founded by Marc Andreessen (Who built Netscape, which AOL will finally decommission February 1st) which morphs social networking from a static web page to ad-hoc networking. Looks interesting (but again, will it hit critical mass?).

A newsletter from the Fox Group states:

Technology that will make a difference

Development of social networking technology – Next generation Internet applications such as Facebook and YouTube are, and will continue, to change the way people work, play and communicate together. 

What we find interesting is the fact, that like many other new technologies such as chat and blog services, these applications started at the consumer level, and are now moving rapidly into the enterprise. 

The user communities pressure to move these applications into the enterprise is driving IT, network and security professionals to adapt at an ever increasing pace. They continue to struggle with how to support these type of cross-over applications, combined with pressure to maintain or reducing corporate network and IT operations budgets.

New technologies such as these with their ease of use and ability to instantly communicate with millions of people in real time on a global level will have a long-term impact on our financial, political and social environment  beyond what we can imagine.  

Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. The biggest problem with social networks are that they are a walled garden. I have been invited to no less than 5 different ‘social networks’. The most common are Linkedin (Corporate market focus) and Facebook (broader). If I were to join each – I would have to maintain and use each – discreetly. So which do I choose? I don’t have enough time and as the Economist article points out – how I discern between family, friends and business if people start sending me invites?

• Personal observation: Social networking will have an impact on business, but not in the way that the Fox Group thinks (i.e. I don’t think it will happen ‘rapidly’). I think that social networking technology will impact the enterprise by forcing companies to improve their collaboration technology focus. A few focus areas: Tighter links between the directory and HR data (Please, if a corporation cannot deliver an automated org chart out of Active Directory, how will they be able to move to the next stage?), implementation of applications like SharePoint where employees are allowed to host their own page (with their shared documents, data) and richer collaboration though the unification of communications (Where Active Directory/Exchange contact information, mobile phone, internal voice and data network, instant messaging and presence are combined to allow people to communicate with others whenever, wherever).

2. How connected do I really need to be? I have Outlook for contact management, I have Live Messenger for chatting and I blog with clear knowledge that anyone could be reading the blog. As you will note, there are no pictures of my family on the blog – a personal choice. But I have lots of friends keeping in touch through the blog and have had more than a few reach out and contact me after many years.

3. I share pictures with family through a Live Spaces account that is tightly controlled. I transfer boat loads of pictures and videos to family and friends via the amazing folder sharing feature in messenger. Simply take the folder, drop into the shared folder and VOILA they can be copied to that person’s local machine. Handy.

4. I am sick of reading about how it will revolutionize everything – it will not.

In a nutshell, I am not joining in. The technology is seeing commercial application by encouraging business software providers to implement features which make corporate collaboration easier. But, enterprises have been doing that for a while and one could argue that this isn’t that new of an idea (Think of monster.com – that is, in the simplest of terms, a social networking site linking employers and potential employees).

In the end, just like Instant Messenger became Office Communicator, the enterprise will adopt the things that make sense.

But on the consumer end I wonder, will it last? The consumer is a fickle beast. Instant Messenger remains but blogging has now become hardcore only (Like social networking, it was a ‘big’ thing a few years ago but many have abandoned for social networking). YouTube remains strong but has many, many competitors. And as for social networking we are now starting to see people write about the death of Facebook. Facebook, Ning, mySpace, Xiaonei, Geezeo, Wesabe,Yodlee and on and on …. Personally, I don’t have enough time to be interested.

Maybe it will be like corporate blogging, the consumer trend that would revolutionize corporate communication in 2005-2006. Where did that go?