Social networking, as we see it today, is only mildly interesting to me. It solves the problem of keeping in touch with people I already know, a real problem, and a pressing one, but not one I need a whole lot of help with. It also solves this problem tangentially -- if it were really intended to help us keep in touch with our friends, it would look more like a CRM system. "You haven't talked to Charlie Smith in three months. Would you like to initiate a phone call?"

What I want is something that will put me in touch with friends I've never had.

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Several threads I've been thinking about a lot recently just came together in my head in a way that I wanted to share.

First is the death of the video industry as we know it. Television and the movies will be with us for a long time yet, but more sophisticated consumption of media is eroding the ways companies traditionally earn money from moving pictures.

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