Interesting – Wikia Open Sources Social Networking – Focused Networking Now Open to All – as written up in Read/WriteWeb

"…More generally, though, it could impact the social news and networking economy overall. We wrote earlier this week that the big social news aggregator model (Digg, Yahoo! Buzz) is vulnerable to market share erosion at the hands of niche social news sites. The same can be said for the big, general interest social networking sites. While most users will probably always want some presence on big sites, the potential is there to have the majority of communication online occur in a targeted niche community of people interested in and informed about the specific topics that an individual is interested in."

I would not shed a tear if Digg were negatively impacted by Wikia though I doubt that'll happen. In fact, just because you have Social Networking tools doesn't mean visitors will use them – posted about it in MediaWiki’s Social Profile extends White Label Social Networking.

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Last year when I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association (Social Media Committee Director) my newly formed committee started with a few missions, one to draft Social Media Standards (right now Social Media and Standards Committee are working on this jointly).

Met with Gary Angel soon after, and in New York City (where I live) I made this movie which records one of the moments we spoke about drafting standards (but how – with what?)

Even as the Social  Media Committee at the Web Analytics Association is building a Social Network called WAASOCIAL, I'm aware that by promising too much, we could lose more than we gain because Social Networks haven't matured yet – and expectations often exceed what it's capable of (yet).

For example, I'd like to see the Kickapps platform have a recommendations engine to match up members of WAASOCIAL by skills, but it doesn't have that capability.

Social Networks are a good way to create and seed user generated content – the messaging is superior because you can keep in touch with you friends effortlessly, create personalized news feeds, and end up at events that you'd never know about without the medium of a Social Network.

On the other hand, Social Networks that promise more than they deliver are going to end up losing more than they gain – and I wrote about Going.com's issues in detail over at The Analytics Guru.

I  think the better strategy is to promise less from Social Networks but over deliver.  How Going.com would do it – create filters so I don't have to see the events I'm complaining about in my post on Social Networks that promise more than they deliver.