Social Media– one big Middle

A quick thought on all the social media networks, messaging tools, feeds and virtual worlds out there.

Dave Huston asked on Twitter: “Staring in awe at the front page of friendfeed.com … where does it end???”

Of all the thousadns of messages out there, this one caught my eye.

Why? Random timing sure, but the question is bigger than FriendFeed.

My response: FriendFeed is a big Middle. There is no End. That’s based on my impression of how FriendFeed is working. People re-add their friends from other social networks to see all of their feeds in one place. Great! But for now I only go there to add people and respond to people following me. I haven’t figured out how I might process this information. Will there be a search function? Will other social networks and portals take the feed information and find ways to sort it for us? For now, it’s just a big middle; adding, being added and knowing that information is there, whether I do anything with it or not.

Of course, Dave responded with: “Aye, but now we have aggregator aggregators? What’s next?”

— Well, first, how about a FeindFeed to keep track of all the jerks and bad guys out there :)

Then Ike Pigott chimed in with: “I need a meta-aggregator to aggregate my aggregated feeds. I’ll call it Aggri-vator!”

Seriously, I feel all of these social media outlets are a big Middle. If people stop using one, it doesn’t “end,” the network just moves on. The important thing is I know where the people i want are, and where they are and how we can tap each other’s expertise, wit, friendship, connections and whatever else we are in this for. These are the little Endings I take out of the big Middle.

Middles can be wearying, but it’s those mini-Endings along the way that help us get stuff done.

Plus, Middle is good. Middle is the sandwich meat; Middle age is the new Young (I hope), and Middle C is an important part of any musical piece. Please add your own forced metaphors in the comments section.