Everything on the web seems to be social now. Social games, social music, social blogging. It falls into place exactly the way Mark Zuckerberg saw it, that social is taking over the web with facebook in the center.

But do we really like it or is it just a good distribution strategy?

It seems to me that many of those social layers are not necessarily a way to bring value to users, but rather an excuse to make him invite his friends and play a magic viral trick. In that sense, entrepreneurs often reverse engineer their product design. They design social features, not because it's good, but because it will help them acquire other users.

More generally, its a bit sad how more and more products are designed not to be purely awesome but to be easy to distribute. How marketing is integrated into product design.

In the beginning of internet, I was on Infonie on my Gateway PC and one of the first product opening my eyes to how crazy was this internet thing were chat rooms, it was called "Talkie". You could talk to people you don't know! You couldn't invite your friends anyway because, well because chance are they didnt have internet. So you would talk to people all over the world who could have the same interest than you or just share things you've never heard of. Different time, different acquisition strategy, different products.

I like my friends, but I miss the unknown, the strangers, a different crowd…