fog of eternity

Not only do I live on the internet, I often know the cool places to go. The place where you can find the best coffee, a quiet pub where you can read the newspaper on a Sunday over a pint. The new restaurant that nobody's discovered yet. And then all the tourists turn up and ruin the whole thing.

That's the early adopter's view of when social media services go mainstream. It's one of the reasons I don't like Facebook, it's why I never use Digg these days. They're filled with the hoi-polloi, and they're no longer cool. Sure, I found it first, but I don't want to drink there any more.

The cool bar versus the tourist trap

The busiest pubs in London were the city centre pubs around Leicester Square. When I lived there I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, they were trashy and loud and you couldn't have a conversation.

But I did spend a lot of time at a little pub in Walthamstow called the Nag's Head, which had live jazz on a Sunday afternoon and a great selection of Belgian beers. That was London for me.

It's the same in social networking. The latest new development is our cool little local bar. We like to hang out at Sphinn, or on FriendFeed. It means we hang out with the same friends talking about the same things. That's our hangout, not Myspace or Facebook, they're like that busy and unpleasant city centre pub.

But when that cool bar gets a bit of press...

The tourist traps change though, and sometimes that cool bar gets a couple of good reviews in the newspaper or a tour guide, and then it's just packed with visitors. What was once a pleasant watering hole is now a loud, brash and annoying place.

The best example of that in social networking is Digg. The tech stories, the specialist interest, the stuff the internet's cool kids talk about, that's all getting drowned out now. It's drowned out by YouTube videos and celebrity gossip. That's Digg's equivalent of the loud music and obnoxious chatter.

So we move on to the next bar, a new opening, something off the beaten track. Somewhere the mainstream hasn't discovered yet.

The mainstream isn't our place

That's not a criticism or snobbery, it's just fact. The vast majority of internet tourists just want to visit that busy and lively bar and have a chat about nothing important. They don't want to listen to Robert Scoble waxing lyrical on the news of the day, or Maki talking about how to make friends and influence people.

But as residents of the city, of the internet, we want it to thrive. We know tourism is important. Even if we don't want to visit that big nightclub these days because it's too full and the drinks are too expensive, we know that it's important because without its success the new bar round the corner wouldn't be opening.

We can't get precious about social media when it goes mainstream. Sure, we can grumble a bit because "we were there first", but it's only so long as some of those cool sites and services make it big that new ones will keep opening. If nobody had ever visited Digg in the first place then we wouldn't have Mixx.

And whatever happens, when that new place opens its doors, at least we'll be the first ones in to buy a beer.