Social Networking and Collaboration...

Upon the completion of the assigned readings for tomorrow's class, only one of the topics remains with me...SUSTAINABILITY...

Although "sustainability" was never used in Smart Mobs, I do believe that is what Mr. Rheingold was referring to when he mention the regulation of the use of common areas (i.e grazing pastures, aqueducts, etc). (p 34/35) While I do not feel as though he did a good connecting this story to social networking as a whole, I do feel as though this story is analagous for two different situations.

1.) How big can the internet grow without over-running itself???

2.) Is it possible for a network (on a smaller level...maybe Facebook) to become too big.

3.) Who should be in control of regulating the internet???( This is a whole other blog post...Keep your eye out for this one....)

While the first question is far beyond the reaches of my current intellectual capacity, I do have an idea about the latter. I would say that Facebook is a prime example of a network becoming too large. At its inception, Facebook was just a community for college students. It was great!!! Over the past eighteen months or so, it has drastically changed. It went from being a college network, to a high school and college network, to being a network open to the public. I noticed that it was much more difficult to locate people because there were so many more "Joe Shmoe's" in such a large network than in the network of yore. This was just one of many issues that arose from the evolution of Facebook. There were also security/privacy issues that arose with some of the new "features" installed in Facebook.

I dunno, I just think it is important not to spread too thin....and large networks tend to do exactly that.