[Peter Yared is the vice president of apps at Webtrends, which acquired Transpond, a social-apps developer he founded. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.]
For a so-called social utility, Facebook has been getting more and more useless.
At first, Facebook friend overload was an early-adopter problem for overnetworked Silicon Valley insiders. But now, friend overload is hitting the mainstream consciousness. Many people who have been using Facebook for a few years find themselves inundated with friend requests by everyone from elementary school classmates to work colleagues. The resulting mess of casual acquaintances on Facebook has quickly overwhelmed newsfeeds with uninteresting minutiae and people you really don't care to see.
In response, there has been a lot of recent activity by startups exploring concepts related to small groups of friends. Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley has long talked about how his location-based service has a more "real" social graph — people with whom you're willing to share your location. Path is run by Dave Morin, a well-known ex-Facebook employee, and isd elivering a mobile photo sharing network for your 50 closest pals. Newly popular startups like GroupIn are bringing group texting back into vogue. Even
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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b6d70de6a3202cc58bc97c587b9d0c39
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