The debate goes on…is the future of social networking continued growth in niche sites or consolidation around the popular sites of today Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  Our contention is that the proliferation of niche sites will continue so long as there are tools to make it easy to participate on multiple networks.  A thoughtful blog was written by Dan Schawbel on Mashable…”Twitter, Facebook, Digg:  Can You Join Too Many Networks?”.  He cautions against joining too many networks.  We break down the problems with joining numerous sites into two parts.  First, the basic plumbing (infrastructure) to connect sites.  Part of the problem with managing multiple sites is moving data between them.  The second part is managing relationships in a way that is meaningful to the user….NOT site centric.  At Minggl we are working to automate both of these.

Let’s start with the easy part, the plumbing.  Dan writes, as the number of social networks you use increases, “Your ability to constantly update each profile, to ensure it includes the most updated and accurate information, will be unmanageable and unenjoyable.”  As he notes, many tools exist today to help with this.  Currently at Minggl we offer the ability to update multiple parts of your identity across sites at the same time.  Users can update status, send messages, and post photos to multiple sites from Minggl (note – the photos are currently only viewable to other Minggl users).

Another plumbing problem we consistently hear is simply remembering passwords for multiple sites.  Minggl automates login and navigation to sites for users.  In fact, data sharing tools such as Facebook Connect, MySpace ID, Google Friend Connect, and OpenID address the login issue as well.  As long as Minggl and other apps continue to build plumbing to connect sites you can scratch that as a reason against joining more.

Dan also wrote, “by joining a social network, you are setting “conversational” expectations, meaning that people should expect you to have a decent level of participation on each one.”  This is the more difficult problem to solve.  But updating status on all your sites on a regular basis with one of the existing tools that enable this already takes care of managing a significant part of your identity.  And the opening up of platforms and data sharing also help you keep up your identity…if only in the “ambient awareness” sense.  You can scroll through your Facebook newsfeed to get a sense for what friends are doing on other sites outside of Facebook such as YouTube and Flickr.  As such, the aggregate feed of what a friend is doing around the web provides a sense of identity and participation.  So your friends don’t really have to be actively participating on all their networks all the time.

Minggl aggregates friend activity and plans to take it a step further.  We already help you prioritize information flowing in and away based on relationship categories (coworker, classmate, family, etc).  In future versions, what comes into your view and what goes out to your friends will be based on relationship strength with each of them.  For example, Minggl will know to share my party photos from the weekend only with my college buddies.  And it will know to notify me immediately when I get a message from super blogger Robert Scoble.  Since I am actively sharing and receiving content with my most important friends, my participation on social networks should be quite satisfactory to all.  To learn more about our view on managing relationships on the web, read our submission to the W3C Workshop on the future of social networking.

Please share your feedback and thoughts.