Communication Apps

In one of his blogs, Ben Thompson listed 10 social apps he had used in the last two days (in no particular order):
“Twitter, for keeping up on news and commenting on tech and stratechery
Facebook, for posting personal status updates and checking in
LINE, for text messaging with my wife and friends in Taiwan
Snapchat, for exchanging photos with my wife
Skype, for instant messaging with my colleagues
Facetime, for talking with my wife and kids
Instagram, for posting cool photos
Email, for all types of content, both work and personal
Photostream, for sharing photos with my family
WordPress, for posting to this blog”

Why so many apps? Thompson’s answer:
“Social is about communication, and communication is, and always has been, conducted through multiple mediums... There are three primary means of communication: text, photo, and video/voice.”

He even drew a map of the different apps and the purpose they serve (1-to-1 or 1-to-many? Permanent or ephemeral?):

I felt his map does make sense. And if that’s how the majority feel, then sorry, Mark Zuckerberg, there can be no one communication app to rule them all. Not even Facebook…

Of course, using so many different apps has a downside. As Nick Carr wrote:
“No mortal can keep up with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc., all by himself/herself. There’s just not enough realtime in the day.”

But fear not. Google just filed a patent for “automated generation of suggestions for personalized reactions in a social network.” Huh? Let Carr translate that for you:
“(What Google is saying is that) At this point, we have so much information on you that we know you better than you know yourself, so you may as well let us do your social networking for you.”
Carr’s prognosis on where all this is heading:
“A computer will generate a personal “congratulations!” note to send to a friend, and upon the reception of the note, the friend’s computer will respond with a personal “thanks!” note, which will trigger the generation of a “no problem!” note.”
And eventually:
“The thing that you once called “you” will be entirely out of the loop at this point, of course, but that’s for the best. Face it: you were never really very good at any of this anyway.”

The machines will rule the social networking world. Come to think of it, that is the entire world for most people these days!

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