Stuart ‘Skype’ Henshall has written an excellent article arguing that the online social networking model pushed by the dreaded YASNs is “broken” and reminding us that many simpler tools, including on the desktop, are more useful for online socialising. The article references Molly Steenson’s comments at the SXSW conference

“Social networks does not equal social software all the time. You need to take into consideration the complex systems and the value exchange, The end result could be social software. But the end result could also be a physical space.

Beyond social software, social networks have a lot of relevance. We’re all a part of social networks. You can log into the Internet never, and you’re still part of social networks. What’s passed across isn’t independent, autonomous units but relational ties and links. There are actors in a social network. They can be a node, an individual, a business transaction.

So what is social software? Software for social networks. That includes blogs, instant messaging, friend-of-friend networks, email, cell phone software, and the whole Web. We need to open up the bigger question of what people are really doing and then come up with the things they need to support that.”

On the subject of new tools to support online social interaction, the innovative peer-to-peer telephony application Skype has received $18.8m in second round funding, according to Register. As Alex Gault comments, this may spur on the major telecoms companies to accelerate adoption of (free, configurable) VoIP services. Perhaps true, easy, free voice integration could be entering the mix some time soon
Elsewhere, Jeremy Allaire announces the launch of his brother’s new desktop application Onfolio that allows users to quickly build mini-catalogues of research material that can be shared online or … ta da …. via RSS feeds. (We spent most of today going through our new totally-RSS-enabled knowledge sharing network with some of the key stakeholders who will use it – the idea that they can build research collections – gradually, over time – on the desktop and then share it through our system by importing an RSS feed sounds like a great idea.
Meanwhile, Ray Ozzie took the opportunity of congratulating JJ Allaire about Onfolio to also remind us that Groove 3.0 – the latest version version of his excellent peer-to-peer collaboration tool – is in beta
It’s only a shame that all three applications mentioned above don’t work on Macs yet AFAIK