I think the only phrase which drives me more insane than “Web 2.0″ is “Social Networking.” While Web 2.0 kills me because it means absolutely nothing, social networking kills me because it’s used to refer to absolutely everything. Do you have a blog? Oh, you’re social networking. Do you rate things, or take comments? Oh, you’re social networking. Are you building a new website? You totally need social networking, otherwise you’re still Web 1.0.

So, as a developer, what do you think every single client I talk to wants? A Web 2.0, social networking application. In order to build social networking applications, I need to understand how they work, so I need to try to engage in them. This explains why I’ve signed up to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pownce, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit. I may be missing some, I can’t even remember. I think my impressive list of active social networks accounts for close to half of the “big ones” and I’ve spent a fair amount of time on all of them trying to figure things out. So which, of all the ones I’ve tried, is my favorite?

None of them. They’re all flawed, stupid, or boring. I treat them as a chore. I engage, I test, I make friends and I have absolutely no fun. I understand why people like them, why then enjoy them, and how they use them (except for Twitter and MySpace which remain relatively mysterious to me), but I’m just not really into them.

The potential upside for me is huge. Syndicating my content, growing my knowledge base, discovering new tricks, building relationships… all good things. Yet honestly, I’d be happier without them. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I don’t have an overly large circle of friends, and I could really care less about what happens to the people I don’t interact with “in RL.” What’s more, so many of these sites make me feel disconnected from the masses; so much of it is so incredibly stupid to me. I don’t understand the hook for a lot of these sites, and that causes me to doubt my ability to do my job well. In my opinion Facebook is infinitely better executed than MySpace, yet MySpace is still the more popular app, so, what is it that I’m missing?

It’s a topic for another day.