Genome: rethinking of Social Networking

Social networking is a fascinating topic on Web 2.0. Despite of the various social network sites, there are still open questions about social networking in general. Vladislav Chernyshov, one of the co-founders of Genome along with Andrew Chernyh and Dmitry Gorpinchenko, discussed several of these issues in his blog.

In the post, Vlad argued five major problems in the current social networking practices: (1) the lack of sufficient privacy protection, (2) the overflowing of social message, (3) the low quality friendship maintenance, (4) the poor performance of advertisement filtering, and (5) the lack of identity management. Nevertheless are all the issues critical to the future of social networking, Vlad and his peers founded Genome to solve the problems. The company is at Novosibirsk, Russia. Invited by Vlad, I am a member of the advisory board.

The Genome service aims to solve the problem of identity management first. From the solution it will gradually cover the other four issues as well. The essential Genome service well integrates social networks, instance messagers, contact managers altogether and makes the integrated individual identity be accessible anytime from anywhere in the world. In person, I call the service a real Web-3.0 effort since it directly addresses the primary Web evolutionary issue at the level of Web 2.0---the contradiction between unstopping quantitative increase of Web 2.0 resources and the short of managing personal resources cross various Web-2.0 sites. Thus, Genome is not another Web 2.0 service. By contrast, it will be a real Web 3.0 service once it is fully developed.

In summary, Genome shows that we really need to start rethinking social networking to its next generation. The flood of social network sites has gradually made us more trouble than benefit. As Vlad pointed out, with more social networks, the quality of friendship decreases, the individual privacy leaks, the personal identity is under risk, and let it alone the distraction of increasing pokes and advertisement from all kinds of "friends". Genome will help solve all the problems. Just keep on watching.