Integrated Social Networks (ISNs)

January 23rd, 2007 Robert Bosman

As stated in the previous three blog postings, we are heading towards a new generation of social networks, that will integrate personal, corporate and governmental collaboration and co-creation. So let’s call them integrated social networks (ISN).

The future will show 2 main types of Social Networks:

Personal Social Networks
+ Corporate Social Networks
= Partially Integrated Social Networks
=========================

Personal Social Networks
+ Corporate Social Networks
+ Governmental Social Networks
= Fully Integrated Social Networks
======================

Of course an INS is also partial, if it is composed of Personal Social Networks and Governmental Social Networks only, so no integration with corporations. And that brings us to one of the major future dangers: a separated development in which corporations and governments both start to develop their own partially integrated social networks, each based on a different architecture. This ‘data island scenario’ will drive the end user even more crazy - with all that incompatible logins, account names and passwords - than is the case today. Moreover, such a scenario will not only be x times as expensive and inefficient, it will also frustrate the development of the most important data validation services, that will be absolutely necessary to build and maintain the trust levels we need in Society 4.0. And it is even worse: when we as a society start integrating data without offering sufficient data reliability, we will substantially support all kinds of organized crime and even terrorism.

In other words: we can not afford a ‘data island scenario’ in the development of integrated social networks. But that is exactly what is happening at the moment. The absolute lack of global standards for Integrated Social Networks at one hand and the ongoing growth of opportunities for using web techniques, encourage millions of organizations and a lot of governments to generate their own solutions. The Dutch Government, for example, is investing a tremendous amount of money in all kinds of integration projects, among which are very sophisticated ones that are integrated with a lot of governmental and semi-governmental services and even with some major corporate services. All praise for that!!! But… the English Government is doing the same, based on a different strategy and architecture. As is the government of the USA. And we may add most other countries to the list. In the corporate environment we see the same. This is almost a horror scenario, that by the end of the day may produce at it’s best a local sub optimalization, with a tremendous administrative problem in integrating the different data islands.

Who can stop this development? Not the individuals; they don’t have the investment power (yet). Not the governments; they are not the leading inventors of new system opportunities but only users of existing technologies. Not the majority of all organizations; they are also followers of the technical developments. But one category is left: the leading system developers, the major global ICT corporations that have the power to generate and maintain new global standards. I realize that they are in a tremendous competitive fight. Nevertheless, it is their responsibility to help our global Society developing in a safe and reliable way; that way can only be the development of profound common, global standards for Integrated Social Networks.

And history thought us, that it was the rise of common standards - even standards like language, writing and printing - that created the major leaps in human development. That leaps will also create new business opportunities for the standard creators.

I hope this article will contribute to the rise of those standards; 2BeWise as an organization is dedicated to contribute to it.

Technorati Tags: digid, federated login, verification, tusted third parties, web 2.0, URM, CRM, HRM, social networks, co-creation, society

Entry Filed under: Internet 4.0, Society 4.0