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[This post is based on a post written by Romi Mikulinsky and me, published - in Hebrew - in the popular HolesInTheNet blog]

We live in crazy times, I tell you. Everywhere you go, someone tells you that you have to be more “social” – use social media, connect via social networks, have a social strategy, yada social yada. And it seems that the more “social” we get, the less social we actually are, as we spend most of our time in front of a screen (and I don’t care which of the four it is…).

Social Networks are all around us. source: The IMA Museum blog

But you can’t escape it – social networks have won us over. If you’re not there, you might as well not exist. And in case you’re a late adopter to all of this, here’s a short recap: early social networks, known then as “online communities”, started forming around 1994. Geocities (RIP) and Tripod were probably the best known community websites. Then, between 2002 and 2004, the “social networks” emerged, with Friendster leading the way, and MySpace, Bebo and Facebook following behind.

Social networks are all about making “friends”, although the meaning of friendship has really changed since social networks became a big thing. In fact, this year the word “unfriend” is Oxford’s word of the year. The most popular English word of 2009, by the way, is “Twitter”, but we’ll get there in a few paragraphs.

As social networks became popular, “specific” social networks started appearing, catering for specific, specialized “common grounds”: LinkedIn connects you to your professional “friends” (colleagues, fellow and former co-workers); Classmates connects you to your old classmates; Musicians and artists can be found on MySpace, etc. Even large organizations started creating their own social networks, for instance IBM.

The Pros and Cons of “Specific” Social Networks

The “specific” social networks offer us defined, bordered content. As Gal Mor, chief editor of HolesInTheNet, wisely notes [Hebrew. Sorry!], “specific” social networks are actually not competing, and shouldn’t compete, with other networks, “specific” and non-”specific”. They offer us clear and simple pros:

• It is clear what data they hold and which people are members
• It is therefore simple to find information, as the content and borders are well defined

On the other hand, as the content in each network is limited, we find ourselves using more and more social networks, and their numbers are increasing on a daily basis. Being a member of several social networks raises a whole new set of issues:

• How one connects to people in each of the different networks?
• How one manages their “split personalities” over different networks?
• If I want to upload pictures, will I use flickr (a “specific” service), facebook or twitter?
• If I am updating my status, should I update it across networks?
• When I am looking for information, where do I begin?

It really seems that these days everybody needs a social network policy. Not to mention the REAL annoyance in the proliferation of social networks, and I’m using Gal Mor’s words here:

Who wants to open yet another profile?

a visualization of my personal Facebook network (via TouchGraph)

Social Networks, Meet Unified Communication

All this really reminds me of the “more is less” debate regarding our communication means, especially in the enterprise. We have many choices, each with its own set of characteristics and its place on the communication continuum. But after we learned to master each one, with its pros and cons, we realized that indeed more is less, unless they are unified.

Unified communications is aimed at reducing the “communication latency“, that negative effect on our effectiveness that is caused by having to deal with too many means of communications. By using one platform, with one interface, to access all those means, either explicitly or implicitly, that latency is reduced if not eliminated.

When I receive my incoming calls – video, voice, IM – using one application; When I can check my voice and video mail, chat history, e-mails from there; When I can reach someone – by e-mail, phone, whatever – from that same application, I can spend my time on real work instead of switching between applications and playing that old “cat and mouse” game.

And the same goes for social networks. The “secret” of connecting the interfaces, even if the connection is not “unified” but limited, is slowly but surely spreading around the social arena. You can update your status in Twitter, and automatically update your facebook and LinkedIn status as well. You can upload an image to flickr, and share it on facebook automatically. I am using the blip.fm integration with Twitter to “dedicate” songs to my friends using YouTube and other streaming services. This is not only cool, but effective and increases productivity. Not to mention helps you handle your social network fatigue.

Social Networks, meet Unified Communication

And it’s no coincidence I have mentioned Twitter in all of my examples above. It seems that in the present battlefield around the “one platform”, the “one interface” that will unite all those social networks, Twitter is winning on many fronts. Almost without trying Twitter has become, in a weird evolution that I think its creators didn’t predict, the center of information for many of us.

We have dumped our RSS readers, stopped forwarding e-mails, quit the forums and chat rooms, and are focusing on Twitter more and more for sharing information and links. Why follow a bunch of blogs, when you can follow the bloggers themselves?   Why spend time in various social networks, when Twitter has the interesting links to them as well?  You just follow your friends and interests on Twitter, and turn your timeline into that ultimate unified social network.

Ultimate?  Well, not really. Information on Twitter gets lost too quickly. “Walled gardens” are still un-penetrable, even with links from Twitter into them. The massive amounts of information make us miss out on important things too often. And yet, until there’s a better service, or social network, that will offer a better integration – one network to rule them all – Twitter is the only sane option to stay social, or “social”, and still have a life.