This evening I signed up for LinkedIn for some inexplicable reason, probably the same gnawing I-don’t-want-to-miss-out-on-the-new-stuff feeling which got me keeping up with the Jones’s in Twitter. I don’t know what these apps will mean in the long run, and I’m definitely not comparing the two, but they have something in common, as do many of the (cringe, sigh, cringe) Web 2.0 (*Arrrggggggh there I said it*) apps out there: trying to tune people into other people. But do we need it? Will we use it? In a time when conversations in real life can be about Second Life, you never know.
Some of these apps could be useful, but the best ones seem to complement and expand on the contacts one already has. My colleauges and I del.icio.us each other all the time, almost always yelling across the office, “I’ll post it to your del.icio.us”. But with del.icio.us, Google Calendar, GMail, Flickr, and a few useful others, I’m on the web for an hour just checking all that. I don’t have the time for that every day (or week), so what often gets me even to del.icio.us is one of my co-workers saying, “Steve, I posted that link to you like two weeks ago.” You only need to check out Emily Chang’s immense eHub to get a small glimpse into the unholy amount of web apps being developed all the time.
Want to make a cool web app? Make one which integrates all the crazy shit I join, measures what I use for what and how often, helping me consolidate my web app workflow and make useful choices about which apps are worth using, which aren’t, and which are harmless fun.
Note to Twitter: Stephen just finished writing a blog post.