An observation that socialising doesn't scale. I've been thinking this a lot regarding newspaper comments and the like. It all goes back to "small pieces loosely joined".

Cory Doctorow states the bleeding obvious, but sometimes it needs to be stated.

Best read with a "hmm, yeah, maybe" attitude but this hits on something our current social networks are missing out on - finding the middle ground between your "friends" and everybody. Twitter kinda had this with their option to see replies people you follow made to people you don't follow until it was scrapped for performance reasons but that was only a hint, while Facebook sort of does it for discovering new people but, afaik, doesn't play in the search arena. I want to see friend-of-a-friend search. Just as my local community is made up of people I don't know but who are probably connected to me via someone I do know, so my online community works the same way. Being able to query the data in that network would be invaluable.

Long article by Anil Dash on the emergence of a protocol for, in laymans terms, a decentralised Twitter / Facebook system, which is essential as the centralised model is not sustainable and runs counter to how the Internet works. I'm cautiously optimistic about this and if you think it's above your head would recommend you scroll down to the "What should we worry about?" section, specifically the shift in user understanding and competition from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Open source social network app. Could be useful for creating distributed intranets on your own server.

The notion of "fake following" of people on social networks, where you have a connection with them but don't read their updates, has generated a fair bit of buzz. I think this is a very good idea. After all, we all have people we love but don't want to hear about their stupid hobby all the bloody time. The sort of filtering should be mandatory on all networks with a following system.

Chris Brogan runs through the obvious and not-so-obvious in this very useful list.

Not sure why this tab is open in my browser but it looks like something I might want to investigate. The quote "all things that can or should communicate through the network will communicate through the network" makes me tingle in special places. Oh yes.

Lightweight and lighthearted but useful etiquette guide to using everyone's favourite microblogging status update ambient cloud community tool.

Interesting TechCrunch analysis (I didn't know TechCrunch did analysis, I thought they just did news) on what makes Twitter work. I'd agree with a lot of this.

" Twitter works and enjoys such strong attachment because it provides real-time access to a well-defined audience. The backlog of all previous tweets is a guarantee of permanence (you can even search it) and you can catch up on it anytime. As a result, people use Twitter because they have an idea of who will see their lightweight messages and this sense of audience is reinforced by @replies, re-tweets and references in future conversations (online and offline).

"Designing for the sense of Audience is a powerful tool to create cohesion and a sense of utility among users of a service. This lesson from Twitter can apply to many other services too. But before leaving the current discussion, it’s helpful to look at a service that has missed the full power of Audience so far."

"will transform a vanilla installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform" using a bunch of currently being developed plugins. Hmmmmmm. This could be really good for internal group blogs.

social media blogger whose words I find interesting and in place inspiring. Will be subscribing.

Following Adam Tinworth's "Why Media Gets Community Wrong" rant.

One of those fine line between good and evil things here but when you strain the marketing stuff out there are some interesting thoughts on the whole authentic voice thing.

Great rant from Adam Tinworth which can be summarised as "Community is not a place. Community is an approach to publishing." Plenty in there to learn from.

Stef's new social network for fathers. Looks rather good if I do say so as a mate.

Francine Hardaway on teaching "normal" people about the social internet. Twitter etc are too advanced - it's all about Yahoo. Interesting.

I like this. When Twitter is down you put what you were going to tweet in here and then when Twitter is up it sends them to Twitter. Magic.

Suw Charman-Anderson on relative measures of failure now startup costs are so low for social media.

Long and link-full article by Paul Bradshaw rounding up loads of Twitter tools.