First you had profiles, then you had groups. Most social networks on the WWW are centered around these two components of the user experience. Multimedia posted through the user’s account are seen and reviewed by other users via their accounts, and the better, more pertinent ones are featured within multimedia “pools” maintained by groups, which are user-created, user-sustained mini-communities which are devoted to a particular subject or demographic.

However, the most bleeding-edge concept in social networking is the “place” or “island”, which are user- or group-created pseudogeographical positions which are fixed to a specific “area” of the world within the network.

As stated, these may be created by either single users or by whole groups, and could even serve more than one group during the lifetime of the “place”.

At current, the social network which has best incorporated the concept of “places”, and has probably marketed it to the furthest extents in recent years, is Second Life. The closest WWW-based equivalent to the social networking “place” is Wikipedia’s articles, which are designed to appeal to a specific subject within the online encyclopedia, but can be maintained and sustained by more than one group (or “WikiProject”) which all have vested interests in the contents thereof.

Thus, can the “places” idea be successfully brought to the WWW-based social networks of present? What kind of political arrangements could evolve out of the addition of a new tier to the social networking mores of MySpace, Tribe.net, Facebook or LiveJournal?

Finally, what technological advancements could accompany the development of “places” within these social networks? Could newer applications of the ubiquitous RSS feed (which is already used extensively for both personal and group productions) find a niche to fill in the “places” idea?

EDIT.

A few ideas for RSS updates+Places:

• Events
• Additions, edits and cleanups (for those who are interested in the construction and maintenance of the place)
• New rooms
• New exhibitions
• Scheduled reboots? (Hopefully not; SL tends to have alot of those, and you can be logged out at any time without prior notice)