The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog). Funny (and good) discussion about the idea of the social graph. This was the starting point for an interesting discussion on the topic around the Web this week,

You might almost think that the whole scheme had been cooked up by a bunch of hyperintelligent but hopelessly socially naive people, and you would not be wrong. Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender. Our industry abounds in people for whom social interaction has always been more of a puzzle to be reverse-engineered than a good time to be had, and the result is these vaguely Martian protocols.

But let’s say an inspired mathlete proves me wrong. There’s a brilliant hack that fixes all the issues I’ve raised and we go ahead and build the Platonic social graph. What can you actually do with it