This is one of my posts that I've been planning to do, and procrastinating on, about my outsider observations on Social Networking.

My last one was: Will Social Networks be Sociable? which went into the idea of if a social network could be built linking the timelines and conversations occurring between other social networks.

This post can be boiled down to the idea of why are social networks built around the idea of guest books on each users page and not a forum mentality?

Again, if I get anything insanely wrong please feel free to let me know and I'll add it to this post.

So where am I coming from?  Well I'll look at this from the idea of the big 3 social networking sites that have hit my radar: Facebook, Live Spaces and MySpace.

I'm going to use an example of a social network where the following friendships exist.

Basically you have Bob who has friendships with Joe and Bill and they have their friends.

I'm also going to say that Rod is a friend of Bob's, and for all purposes that Rod and Dave are also friends.

Facebook:  I haven't had a whole lot of experience with Facebook - I have one friend! Actually I really added him to test the idea on this, because I don't know how much use I'd gain from it - but thanks Dave!.

From what I have seen though, Facebook comes with the "Wall" which is basically the idea of a guest book, a graffiti wall that you can leave a message on.  Of course for anyone who wants to know what you are discussing they have to be your friend, and have to go to your profile.

So for example, Bob and Joe were having a discussion or RSS vs Atom over on Bob's page.  Then if Joe, Bill or Rod knew the conversation was taking place they could become involved in the conversation.

If it was happening on Joe's page, then Bob, Joe or Dave could take place in the conversation, if they checked Joe's page.

If it was on Bob's page but then via comments on Bill getting involved it moved there, then Joe, Rod and Dave are cut out from future participation unless they became friends with Bill - in fact they probably wouldn't know the conversation had continued.

MySpace: MySpace is similar, except from my experience there is one difference.  If you try and have a conversation on MySpace, at least when I was a member, a person wouldn't comment on their own page.  In fact someone would message you and it would go into your guest book and then you would message them back putting it in theirs.

In this scenario, if Joe and Bob started the conversation then Bob and Joe could see each other's messages, and Rod would be fine - however, if Bill started participating, then Ted would see the half of the conversation that was on Bill's page and could become involved, but then Bob wouldn't see the responses Bill makes, and Ted wouldn't see the half of the conversation on Bob's page.

LiveSpaces:  I haven't actually seen the guestbook in use, but from Dare's announcement, and making an assumption it's a garden variety guest book, then the whole of the conversation could happen on Bob's page, which leaves Ted and Dave out of the loop, or Joe's which leaves Bill and Ted out of the loop, but again the other participants would have to be aware of the conversation and keep checking up on it.

Now I know there's certain assumptions I'm making in all this but that's the way I have seen these sites working from my limited use.  The worst being MySpace, which for it's part makes people friend each other more readily, but becomes a nightmare of following who said what to whom.

What I don't get is why these sites aren't making more use of Forum technology.  MySpace has forums, and I guess the equivalent would be Groups in Facebook, again I'm not sure what the equivalent is on LiveSpaces.

Anyway, the idea being that if you make a guest book for your page you make it out of a Forum thread that is only visible to you and your friends.  You style it for your Social Network Profile page, so it would appear like a guest book, and then you can have a threaded discussion on your profile page.

This would be the equivalent to what you would get on LiveSpaces or Facebook, however, you get it as a threaded discussion, so people can follow a certain idea along your guest book.

From there, if an idea escalates to something you wanted to share with your friends, then the thread could be moved into a Forum area, that you have the ability to set permissions on.

So you might put permissions on that allows your friends.  In the case of our example, if a discussion was going on at Bob's page and he moved the thread to an open discussion to his friends, then it removes it from his guest book.  How many of Bob's friends want to argue over that anyway?

This allows Joe, Bill and Rod access.

Maybe Bob could then open it to Friends of Friends.  This means that anyone on our hierarchy could join it.  In fact, it could become open enough that you allowed Friends of Contributors.  This means that anyone who contributes, their friends can then view and contribute to the conversation.

From there you could move it to a fully open discussion that was available across the whole social networking site.  By this stage you'd probably want it put into a discussion area as well.

By starting it on a forum architecture, where you can control how open the discussion becomes, and where a thread resides in your forums, you've effectively given the site users to move discussions from a simple starting thread on their guest book to a site wide discussion - and all on the same codebase.

The only forum you'd make available on the main page of a users profile is their guest book, in descending date format of the latest post.

You'd also place two columns available on their page, that only the profile owner can see that would detail: The forum threads they have participated in, and when they were last update/if they have been updated since the person last saw them, in descending chronology of last update - and one that details the threads they have ownership of and when they were last updated.

Then you'd have a public facing column/webpart that detailed to the public what the last forums this user has participated in and their level of security, ie can I join in on their discussion?

Also on the persons private friends aggregate page you'd probably have a list of forums their friends are participating in, that have been aggregated by their friends page.

Maybe I'm wrong here, or maybe this is how certain aspects of these sites are coded anyway.  I just feel from when I've dipped my toe into these sites that it seems more focused on the friendships, building as many links and false friendships as possible to connect people so they can follow the conversation, rather than opening up the conversation to as many associates, groups, or links in the chain as possible, so friendships can develop.

And by building a social network from the idea that you can escalate an idea from a simple guest book entry to a site-wide debate, appeals to me, especially if you can build a notification system that allows your friends to know you're in the debate and they can join in.

Let me know what you think!