Squarely in the dazed and confused column, AOL acquired Bebo today.  I find this acquisition to illustrate that a company can exhibit a psychological illness.  AOL is clearly, schizophrenic.

Everyone is trying to get their hands on a social news site like Digg.  AOL has one that is far superior to the Digg technology, Netscape…er…Propeller, and they are, without a doubt, going out of their way to kill it.  Here is a company that does not comprehend the social media landscape.  Frankly I would consider AOL a dying brand, maybe not dead today, but they are certainly fading.  Now they go and get themselves a social network.

Clearly this is a company in need of, well to be blunt, a clue.  I hope that Bebo can survive, but if AOL’s treatment of Netscape is any indication, Bebo will fade into irrelevancy within a year.

On the bright side, it’s nice to see the relevant social network space getting weeded out.

Research conducted by Duncan Watts and now CNET Networks would lead you to believe so.

Here’s the catch. Duncan Watts is an academic, a sociologist. Neither he nor I should ever come into contact with each other according to his theories. Yet I am now connected to him, albeit in an ancillary way, yet connected enough to have read his Fast Company article and his book Six Degree’s.

How is this possible? It turns out that Duncan Watts, in order to reach a greater audience, got published in an online magazine that is trusted and highly connected to the technology world. This in turn got him noticed by Guy Kawasaki. It turns out that Guy is also a trusted source of original content and he is highly connected to people via his blog. He is the very definition of an Influencer or to use Malcolm Gladwell’s terminology he is a connector.

Sure these connections are not strong ties as in a familial tie, but weak ties (the topic for another blog post). Enough of a connection exists that someone living in north eastern Wisconsin (virtually the middle of no where, serious it just down the road) is connected via a connector in California, to a Academic at a college in New York.

This very connection seems to imply that something may not be entirely correct about the interpretation of Duncan Watts’ work.

Here is a Chris Messina presentation on the DiSo Project where they are attempting to shape what a social network should be.

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