Man, two posts in one day. What’s gotten into me?

Chris Anderson just posted something on his Long Tail blog called Social Networking is a feature, not a destination.

Best part of his post”

As I think about the current Facebook craze and the notion of it as an all-encompassing platform, sucking in functionality from other sites across the board, I find myself skeptical. With my Long Tail hat on, I think that one-size-fits-all will fail in social networking, just as it has everywhere else (which is why I like Ning, which suppresses its own brand for the sake of those of the microsites it hosts).

Instead, I think focused sites that serve niche communities will extract the best lessons from Facebook and MySpace and offer better social networking tools to the communities they already have. I’m sure huge and generic social networking destinations will continue to do well, but I’m placing my bet on the biggest impact coming when social networking becomes a standard feature on all good sites, bringing community to the granular level where it always works best.

I agree 100% with Chris. If I had money to invest in someone today, I’d put it in Ning over Facebook all day long. Might take 15 years to prove me right on that one with all the current Facebook hype, but that’s what I’d do.

There you go. Shooting down Social Networking and Web 2.0 all in one day, with help from Chris Anderson and Crunch Gear.

This my friends is one of those times that I make reference to in my sidebar about blowing your mind.

I just read this post from CrunchGear and I think it is spot on. You need to read why this guy thinks Human Laziness Will Burst The Web 2.0 Bubble?

I mentioned to a friend the other day that the only way all these services get any of the user-contributed content that is critical to them is because people aren’t working anymore. They’re spending time on Facebook, or on Flickr, or writing reviews on Amazon, or Twitter, or on something else besides their actual work they get paid to not do.

People are lazy. Web 2.0 has us all right now being anything but lazy. We’re blogging. Writing reviews. Editing Wikipedia for the good of mankind. Social Networking so we all feel important like we’re in high school again. And as the best part of this article points out:

Whenever it gets here, Web 3.0 may be bigger and better than what we have now, but you can bet that it won’t be foolish enough to rely on the unreliable. And there is nothing more unreliable than human nature.

Amen.

I’ve posted about Launch Magazine before.

I’m on the editorial board, and this is a great issue. If you’re thinking of starting a company, you have to read the article called What’s a Cap Table and Why Do You Need One? on page 18. (HTML version of this article is here) Good stuff. Wish I would have read that 5 years ago, it would have made a significant difference in how I set things up at Doba.

More info about this issue:

I’m sorry, but IMHO I just think that in today’s modern and global economy labor unions are about as worthless as you know what on a boar hog.

The UAW (The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America) started a strike against GM yesterday afternoon.

From the release on the UAW website:

UAW workers went on strike against General Motors over job security, economic issues, benefits for active workers and winning investment in future products

Job security? Is it GM’s mandate to guarantee you a job? To guarantee you pensions and medical benefits until you die? Maybe we should do what France does, seems to work well there: no one gets hired because they can’t get fired and unemployment is like at 25% in certain age groups. Economic issues? When did it become GM’s job to address economic issues? Isn’t that a Macro issue that no one company can be expected to let alone predict, but manage? Winning investment in future products? Let me get this right, the union is trying to tell GM through a strike that they need to investment in winning products? You don’t think that the leadership of GM wants that? Good hell.

The UAW president, Ron Gettelfinger, also said these nuggets from at a press conference yesterday:

“We’ve met and solved all of GM’s problems since 2003.”

“We’ve done a lot of things to help THAT company.” (emphasis and all caps mine)

Look, when you get into this type of deal, you should just shut GM down. Has GM’s turnaround been helped by their employees? Sure. Has it been damn good leadership and strategy and management? Yes. Did the Union solve all of GM’s problems? Far from it; create a lot of the problems more like it.

I know that Gettelfinger is not an employee, but I watched the interviews on the news this morning with several GM employees and they all have an US versus THEM relationship: it’s THAT company, not OUR company. My $0.02: Shut GM down and start over with employees that aren’t unionized, that care about total success of the company, and that quite bitching and moaning about what they don’t have and just get back to work.

I’ll end my rant with this. Not only are unions useless, but I’ll go on record and make a little prediction. Any company that has a significant portion of their workforce unionized is doomed. The massive acceleration of globalization combined with domestic problems such as a completely derailed and broken health are system, a culture of entitlement, and a citizenry in America not taking any responsibility for their own future and economic wellbeing will cause unions to try and do what their mission is (Good Jobs. Good Communities. - that’s the UAW mission) and they will be an Achilles heal for these companies. The companies will be paralyzed, they won’t be able to adapt to macro changes, and they will get their you know what handed to them by competitors–a good number of them that live and exist by a different set of rules most likely in a different country than the blessed U.S. of A.

Guy Kawasaki, one of Doba’s advisors, is putting on a free online web seminar called “The Art of Evangelism.”

He’s going to explain the strategies and tactics of evangelism for products and services.

It’s Tuesday, September 25th at 11:00 am Pacific.

You can register here.