Thomas, you misunderstand me: I come not to fix social networking, but to bury it.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I believe it to be a radically bad idea, bound to create more problems than it addresses. (Just you wait for the wrongful-death suits to start. Whatever their merits, you know they’re coming.)

The whole model of “connection” and “interaction” inscribed in the services you’re talking about is derived from the capabilities of technical systems, not built on an understanding of what makes relationships work and persist. In my view, it’s fundamentally wrong, fundamentally inhospitable to nuance and richness, fundamentally prone to create hurt and to increase the distance between people. No amount of tactical improvement can or ever will fix that.