Sometimes it updates itself (like in Gmail), it has all our real life contacts, some virtual contacts too, and keeps and archive of all our activities online with, in must cases, direct conections to real life activities; and serves for viral uses too.

Sometimes it updates itself (like in Gmail), it has all our real life contacts, some virtual contacts too, and keeps and archive of all our activities online with, in must cases, direct conections to real life activities; and serves for viral uses too.

Furthermore, I think we should really be talking about ’social distribution’. To me (and I accept others have different definitions), viral distribution is when the main function of the app inherently spreads itself - such as a vampire bite on a friend, or Nicknaming someone, each in the form of an invite. An app that just has a separate invite function is leveraging the social graph to spread itself, but I would not call that viral. Just my thoughts!

In my opinion, Social Platforms leverage the power of social connectivity to facilitate social connections (aka the Social Graph), which often entails the point-to-point and viral distribution of things (for the sake of argument, let’s call them “Social Things”), such as applications, photos, notes, thoughts, ideas, information, etc. To me, status updates are a great example of a Social Thing that needs a Social Platform to survive and be really valuable.

I agree that “Social Graphs” may be a product of Web 2.0 (another crappy buzzword), but it does have a theoretical value. I won’t repeat what has already been posted but as social platforms expand beyond social networks and eventually reach the mobile world and potentially the gaming platforms, I would suggest that our “social graphs” will become increasingly relevant.