Social networks are hot. They attract a lot of attention, from users and investors. In Holland Hyves just welcomed it’s 5 millionth active user. (Though ‘active’ is never defined.) And a facebook as sold 11.6% for $240 million.

But what is social networking? Why do we appear to be addicted to social networks? People like social networks for a variety of reasons. But most importantly is that we want to build our identity within a group of people. We want to compete (number of friends.) We want attention (viral nature of facebook.) We want to express (profile.)

But something very important is missing. According to Maslow the physical and safety needs are followed by love/belonging, then come esteem and self-actualization. Especially the last two are important to get a feeling for what is wrong. Where the lower 3 layers are about necessities to survive, the upper 2 are about meaning and value, not only the self but personal.

And this is achieved by ‘doing’. If there is something difficult on a social networking site it is doing something meaningful, in effect the only thing that can be done is seeing and being seen and segmenting the world in friends and ‘the rest’.

We have a hugely popular activity (a bit of a confusing term, in this context) but we know it is only a matter of time for users to go somewhere else. The question is how to retain users. In the case of social networking sites we can do 2 things. We can make it fun to keep coming there. Or we can make the infrastructure into a commodity.

Making it fun is difficult. The world is big place with lots of people with very diverse interests. For people to do something meaningful with other people they have to find each other. Once they have found each other they should be able to create together. An interesting example of using social networks as infrastructure to build something on top of is Ning, where you can start your own social network.

The essence of social networking is managing your social sphere, your friends and family and yourself. It appears to be about communicating but it is not. It is about me and my social network. To make this into a commodity we should not focus on the doing, but on integrating social networking with something we are already doing. We could integrate social networking with mobility, with mobile communication.

A phone has almost all the features of facebook. You can have contacts, install widgets, play games, send messages, etc. But this is not very social. In facebook we can do almost everything we can do with a phone and subscription. But taking facebook with us is impossible.

Integrating facebook and telefonica gives us the ability to differentiate in friends. Adding someone to your contacts is a friend request not just an easy way to remember a number. It allows us to engage multiple persons easily. We can subscribe on what our friends are doing. We can choose to leave a voicemail. We know if someone is able to answer or not. It will become a truly personalized experience to be communicating. And social networking will have become a commodity.