With the advent of the social network, web denizens have been enabled socially in ways that where never possible before. People who would never have been comfortable wining and dining at a real-life cocktail party (myself included) have been given the tools necessary to network, make and follow up with friends and colleagues online. This, of course is old news to anyone in the know at this point.  The biggest story about social networks over the last few years has been the rampant proliferation of new websites and services which, when it comes to a social network can be a less-than positive thing.  In a very real sense, the value of any given network is the people involved in it, so diluting the pool of contacts across multiple networks is problematic for those seeking any sort of total solution.

This of course, is where the social network aggregators have begun to find their foothold, but they still rely on the centralized structures of all the social networks they scrape data from.  If,  heaven forbid Facebook or Twitter or one of the other services people rely on to connect online folds, your carefully built network of contacts and the history of your communication with them evaporates into the ether.

This is exactly the sort of scenario that’s been tossed about a bit in the last few days on various blogs in specific relation to Twitter.  (See this post on Tech crunch) It’s gotten me thinking, and I’ve come to the somewhat chilling realization of just how much I rely on centralized services from for-profit companies (who could fold, or decide to discontinue or change their service dramatically without notice) .  Google, Facebook, Twitter and more, and I don’t see this trend changing anytime soon.

I believe that social portability-the idea that you can maintain your network of contacts as an entity that is separate from any single service will become a very important topic over the next few years.

One can easily see the primary problem with centralized services that are relied upon so heavily, and the arguments against it have been well thought out and discussed.  I would argue, that in the long view, there is a larger and more subtle potential consequence of having large amounts of people become too reliant on a centralized system such as Twitter or Facebook. -Government regulation.  Now before I go further let me  take a step back and say that I’m not anti-regulation on principle, nor  am I one of those breathless conspiracy people that you run into tucked into the woodwork in certain musty corners of the internet. I’m talking about this in the long view.  5, 10 or even 15 years out.

Social Networks as a Business Utility

Before you write me off as a kook, let me make my argument. The web is already the new frontier for  business,  and I believe that social networks will become even more important in the future when it comes to facilitating the kinds of connections between people that make things happen in this new business world.  Traditionally, our government has taken an active role in protecting and regulating any sort of  service that facilitates commerce.  After all,  maintaining an environment in which the economy can thrive is in the best interest of us all.  The Airline industry is a good example of a service that is vital to commerce as we know it today, and I don’t think it is an accident that it is highly regulated and heavily propped up by our government. After all, can you imagine the negative impact on many businesses if affordable air service was no longer easily obtainable?  Find any service sector that is relied on heavily by business and you will tend to see a greater exercise in government control.  Telecommunications, the mail system, banking and finance are all examples.

This isn’t a criticism on the role of government, but rather an observation of just how vital social networks are likely to become in facilitating the kinds of behind-the-scene connections that get big things started in the web 2.0 and . Yes, it is idle speculation but I wonder if social portability and decentralized social networking tools will be important in the future in order to avoid the possibility of State regulation sometime in the (far) future.