Ugh. Social networks = online Gitmos and ghettos (Score 1)

Ughh. Death to all social networks.

Why do people flock to these gated, closed, proprietary online communities? They resemble far too much previous proprietary online enclosures like 'newbie-land' AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, old MSN incarnations, and similar.

I thought people hated being herded together in such online corporate cattleyards, which is why the open, standards based Internet flourished and those old behemoths all died off.

Perhaps the cycle will repeat itself though. The evolution of online Gitmos and ghettos like Facebook, MySpace etc will hopefully soon be followed by a user revolt against their limitations, not to mention the corporate capture of vast online reservoirs of user content by the likes of News Corp they represent.