that's a tough question

communicate better

share what I'm doing, especially what I need at any point in time.

twitter is pretty nice for that

I would like to be able to find exactly what I am looking for with a search engine without taking hours

Hi Marty

I would like to harness the collective potential of all the people in a community to make things better and solve problems

I like the tone of this environement, i wonder if blue was picked because it makes people calm?

Similar to "Phantom" I thought it would be interesting to see a social network solve problems or build something.  A lot like the system/network being greater than the sum of its parts.  I suppose the network would need a core i.d. to rally around (reason/background on its importance), a flow of the right information to provide more accurate input, and a framework to start things off.   There was a book by Margaret Wheatley I read once that spoke to this kind of approach.

Marty: I'm with you on the twitter thing. The problem is, the vast majority of people (and, luck would have it, all but one or two people I know in meatspace) don't want to have to do anything extra for functionality that they don't think is necessary. Twitter is a great idea. I'd keep using it if anyone actually cared what I was doing, though

And in response to the collaborative usefulness of social networks, just look at del.icio.us. Through individuals tagging the web, it's a lot easier to find what you're looking for. It's like the exercise where a bunch of words are listed (medical, medicine, stethascope, scalpel, needle, pills, etc.) related to something, without that thing being mentioned, and when asked to recall the words from memory, the relation (doctor, in this case) is almost always listed. Del.icio.us allows these sorts of obvious associations to be made. It fills the gap in most search engines where, if the specific word isn't mentioned, it probably won't show up.

That is an interesting concept. Creating a social network that has a single purpose to "create something" ummm very interesting. I would imagin if many people are put together within a community the power should be BIG  and The Movement Should be BIG...  interesting .... Im going to give that some thought.

interesting, because I have had an idea of building a site that allows me to freelance out work, (programming, graphic design, web, multimedia, etc) through a web portal, allowing tenders to be submitted through the portal... This would rely very heavily on the social networks.

My idea is to create a site that allows people to list all sites they are members on, what kind of sites it is, and their usernames on those sites. By refering to their user page on those sites, people can easily tell that it's the same person, and "follow" each other on the web.

Basicly, it allows them to see that I, as an example, am a member on both those forums that he/she already are a member on, and he/she can find my blog (that I don't have yet...) and find me on Meebo.

And by having a friend list on that site, all you will need is to log in there when trying to connect to somebody. And when you have somebody else on your friend list, you'll see all sites that you "have in common" and which other sites he/she is a member on, including user names.

 Do you like the idea?

I think you should look at Me.dium, you might be pleasantly surprised.

I hope so...

Update: I tried it a little and don't think that it's what I wanted...

not quite the listing of the site you use... but the more you use it the more you will see that it shows you what other people are also at the sites you are visiting... so instead of people going to a page that lists all the sites you visit... this is a live tool that shows you the people (who also have the tool) who are live at the same site that you are using... you can then talk with them and see other sites they have visited that may be of interest to you.

But that is not what I want. I want what I described, not something that don't let me find my friends on all those other sites they are using, etc.