The second wave of social is about having people be more conscious about building a graph that best matches the needs of what they want to get from that graph. Initially, importing from your contact/address book made sense. But now we can say that was a mistake. You don't need to follow all people you know on all services.

Small tweaks can create a massive macro changes in complex networks, and because of the bidirectional edge, Facebook ended up with a much more private network whereas Twitter looks more like news distribution. Stories from brands can feel forced on Facebook because they don’t truly have a bidirectional arrow, which in the context of Facebook means ... See more

Content-first and advertising-first will break down the dominant social networks over the long run.

A social network like Path attempted to limit your social graph size to the Dunbar number, capping your social capital accumulation potential and capping the distribution of your posts. The exchange, they hoped, was some greater transparency, more genuine self-expression. The anti-Facebook. Unfortunately, as social capital theory might predict, Pat... See more