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Comment by badave | Hacker News Reader

I'm seriously depressed by the number of social networking sites.

I have to agree with your and epall's comment. Social Networking is over saturated and we need to move onto the next step, which is doing something more useful with our "connections" and identities on the net.

we need to move onto the next step, which is doing something more useful with our "connections" and identities on the net.

I'd disagree, but I know I'm in a small minority. I've never entirely understood the desire that people apparently have to bring their real-world identity onto the Net; I've always felt that going in the opposite direction (trivially changeable pseudonymous identities or just straight-up anonymity) would be more interesting[1]. Ignoring the oft-cited benefits for political dissidents, etc., I sometimes feel like we're losing the whole "on the Internet, no-one knows your a dog" thing, which I find a little saddening.

[1] Though "interesting" (my word) and "useful" (your word) are somewhat different criteria, I guess.

"changeable pseudonymous identities" have their place on the internet, in chat rooms, on blogs, throw away accounts on reddit, etc. But imagine how much "spam" is accumulated by allowing something like this to occur. Our identities right now are facebook profiles and twitter accounts, connections being friends or those we follow or are followers of. What do we do with them? Post ramblings of what is happening in our daily lives, tweeting about the something that people may interesting. Millions of us using all this technology for something that amounts to nothing but keeping ourselves amused. Think of what we could actually do. I am not righteous by any means or a do gooder, but with all the connections we form, the groups, the followers, the friends, the masses that flock to whats cool, couldn't it all be geared towards helping people?

Except, of course, that people clearly want more. They're literally asking for it.

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