The Real Time Social Graph, Transient Social Graphs

Image by Laughing Squid via FlickrWhen you say social graph, you talk of friends, as in people you have known, people who were you friends yesterday, are today, will be tomorrow. That is a long tail. And there are many services that have done a good job of curating those social graphs. Facebook, of course, is the grand daddy of them all.

But I see a major void in the real time social graph.

I use several services to plan what events I wish to go to. And that is another space that could use much better services. I use PlanCast, but PlanCast is not populated enough with events. Users find it too hard to create events, and not enough events get created. And not enough event organizers are using it yet. I also use Charlie O'Donnell's events newsletter.

Facebook Will End Up The Social Graph Operating System

Image via CrunchBaseFacebook, far in the future, will likely recede into the background. Facebook will have its Google days. That is but inevitable.

Facebook did not create the social graph. It merely tried to map what already existed out there. But then a social graph where everyone is a friend is not the best possible map.

There are many social graphs. That is our reality. There will be many maps. Facebook is like a broad map of the world. And it can hope to become better and better, but sometimes you don't want a map of the world, you just want a map of the NYC subway system. Or maybe most of the time you just want that.