[via boingboing.net] Warren Ellis makes an important point about systems like Orkut, LinkedIn (which picked up a lot of activity for me today via ASF folks).

These things want to be a hub for your Internet community experience, but they're just not necessary enough. Tribe gets closest, but it's nothing you're going to leave as an open window on your desktop all day. The first new social network system that builds an IM program into its structure may have a shot.

If these things ever get really useful, you are going to want them to be open all the time on your machine. If that happens, then the connection data is just a data stream for whatever application sits on your desk. I know that I don't want to leave a browser window open for this. The experience just won't be interactive enough. I already have too many communications channels -- I recently participated in a discussion that happened part in blogs, part in e-mail, and part in IRC. This is not at all unusual, and I'm surprised that it didnt' wind up spilling into IM. So what am I trying to say here? The data that's in systems like Orkut needs to be available as input to desktop applications. And personally, I'm thinking a small number of desktop applications. Right now I have Mail.app, NetNewsWire, iChat and Snak (IRC) open on my machine. If I opened up either Proteus or Fire to get the rest of my IM, well, I'd need an entire display (on a multi monitor setup) to keep track of all this stuff. It's too much and I need to work. This stuff needs to consolidate.