An Excellent Post About the Social Media Bubble

Umair Haque has written an excellent post about what he calls the social media bubble. His hypothesis is that current social networking models give more weight to quantity (number of relationships) over quality (depth of relationships including trust, shared experiences, reciprocity etc.)

Absolutely worthwhile read. If you can't find the time to read it, you may at least want to read the following lines which I've reproduced from his entry:

"Let's summarize. On the demand side, relationship inflation creates beauty contest effects, where, just as every judge votes for the contestant they think the others will like the best, people transmit what they think others want. On the supply side, relationship inflation creates popularity contest effects, where people (and artists) strive for immediate, visceral attention-grabs — instead of making awesome stuff."