Dave Walker: You know that guy at the office, the one whoâs always trying just a little too hard to be your friend? Most âsocial networkingâ sites remind me of that. They try to force the issue. What Flickr and del.icio.us get right is that the social nature of the software is a side effect of the softwareâs ingenious construction. Unlike a Friendster or an Orkut, you donât build great goofy clouds of contacts and then rank them, like ice cream flavors or something. You do something fun â you show off your pictures, share your links, give them clever keywords so other people can find them, and â the social bit takes care of itself. Your friends find you, find your pictures, subscribe to feeds of all the arcane trivia youâve surfed over this week, all without the venture-capital-trying-to-find-an-exit-stategy flop sweat that pours off the Friendsters and Linked-Ins of the world.
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