facebook

Interesting podcast with Jonathan Zittrain on the impact of cloud computing, open source code, Facebook style closed communities and items like the iphone on the future of the web.

We've blogged before about tools for visualising social networks, for instance who met who at a conference and this tool to visualise election donations, and written about analyses of whole country's social networks.

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar calculated in 1992 that the human brain's size should lead to our social groups naturally averaging at around 150.

so who signed up to facebook, played with for a bit and then realised it was all just a big fat waste of time? fine, there are some good things about it [usability] but there is also a lot wrong with it, especially with their new ad service and privacy policy ...