SNS, kind of

NYTimes has implemented a new "service" called TimesPeople.  Not really much to see right now, but apparently you'll be allowed to "follow" readers and see what your friends are reading.  

This, to me, seems to be even more of a harbinger of saturation than the infant SNS.  Think about it this way...

There's already several ways to accomplish this end.  Hell, NYTimes itself allows you to send to individuals and post pages to Facebook, Digg, Delicious, etc...  I'm not convinced that this new application fills a need.  And I know, we've reached the point that people are now looking at applications replacing applications in the user sphere, but this NYTimes application should have a higher usability built in to it.  You can update from your e-mail server, but what about having a built in/automatic suggestion based on the entry page?  At the very least NYTimes should actually be set to initally import your "friends" based on past usage.  After all, the application is introduced to Times members, we wouldn't be too surprised to see that NYTimes has been doing some data mining now would we.

New SNS

Well it's probably about time, no? NYTimes has run a trend piece on SNS for newborns. Twittering before learning that your feet are attached to your body, if you will. Personally, I'm of the belief that kids should be involved in online networking (of course offline networking should come first). But in this instance, could it be damaging for the children to grow up later and see what their parents have said in their own voice.

""It does feel a little funny to personalize it in his voice and be connecting to other babies as him,” said Kristin Chase, 29, Cameron’s mother, who updates his page at least every other day." Indeed.

CIA's A Space Social Network

So, the ODNI is ready to launch A Space, a Facebook-like social networking site for Intelligence Analysts. It seems like a good idea on the surface. Use crowd psychology and an open network (obviously only open to those with proper clearance) to help integrate the dozen or so US intelligence networks. The only problem (other than the fact that every anarchist hacker alive will now have a giant bulls-eye on the network) is that the agency is planning on tracking usage of the network to determine that none of the users are double agents.

"We're building [a] mechanism to alert that behavior. We call that, for lack of a better term, the MasterCard, where someone is using their credit card in a way they've never used it before, and it alerts so that maybe that credit card has been stolen," Wertheimer said. "Same thing here. We're going to actually do patterns on the way people use A-Space." - see the CNN source

Note to the agency...you're doing it wrong. The reason that networks like Facebook and LinkedIn work so well for distributing information is that their users have at least the impression of freedom. While it's true that FB recently had a coding problem that had people thinking that they were tracking users, they've never come out and declared that as their intent. In fact, the official party line from FB is that the glitch didn't reveal the usage information at all. By telling their agents (who are undoubtedly used to feeling followed and tracked as only a intelligence analyst can) that their usage of the site is going to be tracked and analyzed the agency is prematurely limiting the effectiveness of what could be a very valuable tool.