My project to unlink myself from the dozens or more social networking apps I have registered with is gaining momentum, and a lot of heat. The back channel -- where dozens of people have emailed me asking me what the hell I'm up to -- has been four or five times as active as the public interchange here at Get Real and over at Operating Manual for Social Tools (a project now closing down).

Questions range from "why are you dropping out of social networks in general and LinkedIn in specific" to statements of support and agreement with my general comments. Here, in a nutshell, are my motivations:

• I have participated in the various public social networks only passively -- responding to others requests to connect, and occasionally passing along a request to connect to some contact.
  
• Because of the investments I have made in existing modes of networking -- particularly social media based networks -- I have not spent any significant time trying to exploit the SNAs.
  
• I have had a couple of disquieting interactions with those trying to aggressively promote themselves, their products or services through SNAs, as recounted here and here. I don't really want to be prey to that sort of predator.
  
• I have wound up getting dozens of requests each month in the various networks by people more than two degrees away trying to reach people more than two degrees away, where I have little social capital involved, and I uniformally have been turning down those requests. In essence, these are a form of spam, although one that is allowed by the 'rules of engagement' surrounding the SNAs.
  
• I am annoyed that the SNAs don't provide opt out at every juncture: please don't involve me in requests like this, please don't allow this person to contact me. please don't contact me ever. The services vary widely in this regard. I was able to drop out of LinkedIn within a 24 hour period, although it does require sending a message to customer support.
  
• And I have an abiding interest in the creation of an interoperable basis for social networks. My experience in the instant messagingworld -- where we have several large public networks that do not interact easily -- demonstrates the problems inherent in pushing ahead with a fragmented model, where several large players will grow without any obvious incentives for interoperability, although it may well be in the public interest. (See the recent story about SocialPhysics.org, as an alternative.)

I set up a poll at www.votations.com that has just about a 100 respondents. Although my poll is flawed (for example, the first two questions are really the same, stated slightly differently), I am still interested in the results.

• Of the respondents (which are primarily my contacts at LinkedIn), roughly one third are passive users, not initiating activities but just responding to requests from others.
• One third have considered dropping out, because of lack of acitivity or too many requests.
• 75%+ of respondents believe they have been socially spammed ("someone trying to use the SNA in a way that does not line up with my goals or profile").
• Roughly one third state that SNAs "are lacking critical features" -- a lot of missing features -- that would make them usable.

There is a sizable group, perhaps even more than half who find SNAs beneficial.
The remainder have serious issues and questions. My read is that these technologies are immature, have a long way to go, and probably have not assumed the form that will in the long run be the 'killer app' for SNAs.

My bet is that a deep integration of an open platform for social networking that easily integrates with social media is the best bet for future success. I would appreciate any other pointers to SNA research or development in this area: that's where I think the missing critical features lie.

I plan to rework the poll, and press on with my retreat from SNAs. Next are ZeroDegrees, Spoke, Orkut, Friendster, Tribe.net, and so on. More to follow.