
Social Networking's Next Phase - Harj
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/technology/03social.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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akkartik
Extending Zawinski's law [1] to the web: Every website expands until it
becomes a social network. Websites that cannot so expand are replaced by ones
which can.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawinski's_Law_of_Software_Envelopment

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pg
Google search is pretty big. Is it a social network?

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akkartik
Zawinski's law didn't really apply to windows either.

But it's a good question. Both edges of the feedback loop between search and
social network are interesting:

a) Social networks where we have to manually link to friends will not last.

b) Google's integrating search with notebooks, groups, hosting, email and IM.
Perhaps those are primitives for a social network rather than an OS.

c) Making search more relevant using a social network is perhaps still a valid
approach, in spite of the lack of success so far.

