You Are Not Your Khakis, erm, Your Profile
The recent rage about Orkut has breed a new round of commentary on the true nature of social networking as a whole. Generally, the arguments are centering around the Good they serve the end user and whether or not they can actually make money.
I don't have an answer to either of those questions, but certainly I hope there is a light at the end of both those tunnels. Perhaps the better question to ask is what makes this round of "social" networking interesting at all. Currently, the data collected is misleading if nothing else. Overtly flat profiles read more like online xeroxes of resumes once past. The ties one can discover are not only misleading but almost measurably meaningless, i.e. the tie to the stranger on the subway has far more contact and context.
As one reader noted in the conversation following Ross Mayfield's ever-syndicated "frictionless whuffie fun" post:
I also think another aspect of what makes Orkut (and Friendster et al) not work is that there’s no “there” there. The lack of personal journals/blogs makes the individual content sort of hollow. All you are given to learn about someone is pictures and a few short blurbs, which is nothing compared to stalking through their last few months of journal posts.
The question still stands -- why is something as complex and wonderful as the human psyche and its boundless connections to both its environment and inhabitants categorized, summarize, trivialized down to a 30 field questionaire and 6 random hyperlinks?