I Don’t Like Chocolate with My Peanut Butter or Why I Don’t Want a Social Graph

Everyone is all excited this week about “Data Availability.” Well, everyone except for some of the Data Portability folks, that is. MySpace and Twitter are hooking up, while Facebook and Digg are hooking up, and people are throwing confetti in the streets.

Or at least it seems that way.

I know that I'm not the only person who doesn't really WANT these little mash-ups, and the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized I don't want a social graph. And while I realize that the tech elite are clamoring for it, I'm wondering if more and more average, everyday users don't feel the same way that I do.

See, I use different sites and applications for different things. I rarely use MySpace, but in actuality, I have two different accounts. One is the real me that mostly just has information about what I do for a living, while the other is what I consider my personal account. I tend to not have any “real-life” friends on my business account, and I don't allow anyone I know in the Web 2.0 world to see my personal account.

Add in LinkedIn (professional life only), Facebook (a mix of the two with limited profiles to anyone work-related), Twitter (a mix of the two), Digg (work-related only), and you will start to see a pattern, or rather, a lack thereof. I don't maintain the same group of contacts across any two sites, much less the whole Internet. And I realized I don't want them combined in any way, shape, or form.

If anyone ever took a look at my Adium profile, they would probably be horrified. Nine times out of ten, the contact list is scrolling off the page with an intricately arranged organizational scheme involving something like 12 instant messaging accounts spread across several different online personas stretching back almost 15 years. I can keep them straight, but the last thing I want is all of them linked up in a social graph tying them all together.

I think that there are many people who compartmentalize their online lives in much the same way that I do. The whole idea behind having a social graph and data availability/portability/peanut butter cups is that either you only ever appear as yourself, or that you keep your compartments nice and neat. I think there are just as many people who don't have nice, neat online lives they can manage easily in nice, neat folders or groups. And until this entire concept evolves to the point where it can handle individual cases like mine where a social graph would look a lot more like a tangled ball of yarn and keep everything from bleeding together, I'd like all my social networks to stay out of each other's way, please. I won't be linking any of my accounts to my other accounts any time soon. Will you?

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