Current Socialgraph has limitations

Many Internet experts are saying that  ”Socialgraph” is very powerful and will be the base of a new set of innovative applications in future. My theory is that the connections on the Internet (aka Facebook) are good but they have their own limitations.

Here are 3 characteristics of Facebook stream and socialgraph as we see it today:

Not very useful: Facebook  filters (organizes) content based on Socialgraph and then puts it on stream. My personal observation is that the content that I get on Facebook stream has very little value. They are mostly “b’day wishes from friends-to-friends, photo tagging, and hilarious comments”. They are funny and good-to-have but are NOT very important.

Real-to-Virtual Mapping: Theory behind Socialgraph is that a person’s qualities (personality) can be characterized by his/her friends and their interactions. This theory is correct and works well in normal situations. However, when we talk about interactions on Facebook, 2 important things are missing: a) My friends on Facebook are NOT my “friends”. They are acquaintances. b) My interactions with them is limited to mostly 3 things as said above.

Interactions: Interactions on Facebook are mostly “positive”. In real life, we interact with positive and negative comments/behavior. Unless, we replicate “real life communication” within Social graph, it will be very difficult to deduce anything substantial out of it.

These observations point me to think that either Socialgraph is not powerful enough or Facebook is not making good use of it.

Looking at the money and resources that Facebook has, I tend to believe that they are doing their best in making SocialGraph useful. Maybe the current  Graph itself has limitations and needs to be extended.

~ ciao

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