Social Networks: Is the Novelty Wearing Off?

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Panelists at the Churchill Club's annual Top Ten Tech Trends event debate whether or not social networks are beggining to develop an "uncool factor" among early adopters. Futurist Paul Saffo predicts a shift towards "meaningful social networks" and a growing trend towards being disconnected. "The cool thing will be to not be on LinkedIn and to not be on Facebook," says Saffo.

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What new trends will emerge in the next several years? Find out at one of the Churchill Club's most anticipated events of the year: the 13th Annual Top Ten Tech Trends debate. Be sure to get your seat as we welcome some of the techno-industries' leading (and most opinionated) luminaries as they evaluate predictions for the years ahead. Visionaries at SRI International -- the institute that has conducted $4B in research in the last decade and spun out 40 ventures -- have taken their best shot at predicting the biggest trends of them all. Our distinguished panel will rate and debate the trends. And our usual live audience of Silicon Valley's best and brightest -- all with opinions of your own -- will be asked to agree or disagree. - The Churchill Club

Paul Saffo is a forecaster and strategist with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its practical impact on business and society. He was initiated into the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus in 2000 and is chairman of the Most Important Committee.

Saffo is Chairman of the Samsung Science Board, and serves on a variety of other boards and advisory panels, including the Stanford Advisory Council on Science, Technology and Society, and the Long Now Foundation, as well as the boards of several public and pre-public companies located the United States and abroad.

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[panurge987]

I don't understand how anyone would want to have hundreds and hundreds of Facebook "friends". Why would someone "friend" all those people, most of which they don't know at all, or hardly know? They're just names floating out in cyberspace. I have 17 Facebook friends, and they are all close friends or relatives. And my privacy settings are locked down to just them. I don't want people that I barely know or not know at all seeing my status updates or posts.

[streetfightsecrets]

@CityLoch Me too, actually deliberately just stopped using FB for a week. Logged back in yesterday. I missed literally nothing at all. It all seems a bit pointless now.

[666nonbeliever]

I closed my face book account and never have bin on twitter I would rather do things in the real world.

[CityLoch]

@AsAboveSoBelow01 go buy urself a candy bah

[village1diot]

I have always considered facebook and twitter lame. I have never understood the need. And I will never understand why people are so eager to put so much personal information anywhere on the internet for the public to see.

[ForYeensSake]

Except Facebook isn't supposed to replace anything. It is just another waste of time that happens to be slightly more fun then what people used to do. Facebook can really bond people and to not acknowledge that is just stupid. Ofcourse you don't talk with those 200-300 people all the time. But that was never the point in the first place.

[infoanalysisx]

I hate FB, I hate the fact that people are constantly writing what they are doing so annoying, I preferred myspace better because people didnt' do that, but I have neither now. My preference is now youtube, really it's so much better nothing beats watching videos youre interested in watching and having ur friends know what u watch and what u favorite and vice versa and u can send each other messages. To me theirs no reason I need to know when ur bored and u desperately need someone to hit u up!

[AsAboveSoBelow01]

I'm 21 and proud I don't have a Facebook, myspace, twitter, etc...

[mediadrone01]

How wrong are these people? Major Dad has no clue what he's talking about. Provided you don't use Facebook as an excuse to not engage real people in real life, it simply makes friendships more robust. Learning about people's politics, beliefs, music interests, thoughts.... it only serves to improve your relationships when you finally get together for a beer.

[StrikaAmaru]

@panurge987 "I see no reason why those games couldn't allow people to interact within those games without having to "friend" them" Technical problems, I think; you need friend rights to post to somebody's wall.

I could live with game-friends; it's one way to meet people and actually allow social interaction - which was the whole point. But the big problem is that FB games can't be arsed to separate player friends from non-player friends, which bothers both non-players and me as a player.

[PuppetXeno]

Yey I'm ahead of my time. I closed my facebook years ago, after a brief few months of being sub'd to it. The privacy policy was the real reason, but I've never been into this social media hype. Maybe because I'm not into social chit chat anyway, I don't see the point. But gimme focused group cooperation in MMO's any day.