Thirty Helens Agree - Facebook Fanclubs are out-of-control

Facebook must be a fascinating place for Sociologists to watch, because popular-trends grow, evolve, and die at an accelerated rate there.  The first one I experienced was the, “25 Things About Me” notes… seeming it started slowly, but with a frequency that let you know that it was going to eventually explode.  Then came the “Top-5 Craze”, where folks posted the five NFL teams they hated the most, or the 5 movies they know by heart, etc…  to a certain extent, Top-5’s still pop-up, but a lot less these days. Currently, the “Quiz Craze” dominates Facebook, where you take a quiz to see which Friends character ‘you are’, or the ideal city for you, and so on. However, a new trend is quickly emerging, which promises to be much more annoying than any of the previous ones… as the “Quiz Craze” quickly fades, the “Fan Club for Everything Craze” is cranking up to be huge.

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The future of Social Networks

To know the future, just look to the past.  Each of the big Social Networking, “Web 2.0″, sites share commonalities with Web 1.0 sites that were popular ‘in their day’…  and this is not necessarily a good thing for the Social Networks.  For example:

Flickr is the new GeoCities…  a very popular place for people to upload their content.  Getting people to upload and view content is one thing, but turning that into a profitable business is another.
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