Again, really great post, I am impatient to read the following ones!

Regarding mixing personal and business on Facebook, that’s a perfect illustration of this. I personally think it’s a bad idea and I would advise you to start a hidden profile just for friends. Or kick out all your business-pals and refer them to your linkedin :D.

One of the cons to a universal network is exactly this mixing. In the real world, you also don’t allow just anyone in your house and don’t tell them the same things you would say to your family and closest friends. There is more merit in creating mini-networks, aimed at specific uses: Linkedin as a CV, facebook for friends and family, blogs for everyone, etc.

What I meant was not at all to limit the definition of communities to eBay, but simply to segment the different types of communities according to the involvement of their users. Making business with each other (such as in eBay) requires more trust than in Facebook for example, so it generates different behaviours which might be interesting to analyse.

Concerning the idea of a universal network, you are right on the technical point: it would be sufficient to create customizable profiles depending on the type of “friends” on the same platform. This is why I think that Facebook becoming mainstream is a risk as long as they don’t allow a better customization of profiles: I have in my Facebook network both close friends and job relations I have worked with once in a while, and I certainly don’t want the latter to see my holidays pictures! As a result I put the minimum on my profile, which is not exactly the initial purpose.

It is exactly the phenomenon of dilution that most of social networks are experiencing when becoming mainstream, and this should definitely be analysed. Consequently I really like Ilias’ vision of a unique ideal platform but with different profiles for different types of use: the whole platform would become mainstream but not the different networks in it.

Regarding keeping the structure minimal.
To me, minimal means that you can easily derive value from a network. And Facebook allows that for me. I did not have to sign on to any extra services or install extra applications to talk to my friends. I agree that their current strategy allows things to get complicated quickly, especially if you combine abundance with peer pressure. That, seems to me is asking for some trouble.

But I can see why they did it: as a marketing gimmick and to possibly start a virtual economy inside their network.

Regarding community, it can take so many shapes that I can’t restrict it to just eBay and exclude others. Let’s take the traditional measure of a village, and if eBay fits in, why or why not? and if social networks fit in, why or why not? I will address this in a future post, as I agree that this should be defined.

Regarding efficiency, I’m not sure if I addressed this, unless you are referring to keeping the structure minimal. But your comment bears a response. I define efficient as something that allows me to get from one point to another as quickly and easily as possible.

It seems to me though you are talking about an efficient business-model, which can be argued for Facebook is becoming less and less possible, exactly because of the diversity and strong competition. Again, I plan to discuss business models at a later point, but I will discuss it here if you wish also.

Regarding universal search. I can see both pros and cons for it, but it certainly does not seem technologically impossible to me.

No, Fiji and Ilias, I understand your comments and I will respond to them in 2 separate comments. Jeremy, it was meant to be an abbreviated part 1, not page 1, and I will correct it in page, eh part 2. I hope it will not take 300+ posts to describe this.

Then, you were talking about keeping the structure minimal. But what we have seen for Facebook with the openplateform (the new windows?) is that it’s not a demand driven model, but an offer one. It’s more pushed toward the users. That worked actually with a jump of 2million users in less than a month and half.
Finally, i wanted to add that for me, the best community would be a kind of universal ning one: one user, multiple communities, one profile adapted to each community in which the user is involved.

Well, sorry if it doesn’t make sense, that was my 2 cents…

1) When you say that it wan’t abuse user with fees, do you mean that you believe only in “freemium” services or you just believe that the fees have to be reasonable? Because eBay has created a strong community while charging fees (quite high according to most sellers)

2) At what point you will have to define the “point” of a community. For example, Pierre Omidyar says that he believes that bringing people together to make business helps creating a stronger community than traditional social networks.

3) It will also be necessary to define what is an “efficient” network. For example, I think that Facebook becoming mainstream is a threat, because you start accepting more and more people, without the real possibility of customizing your profile for your different networks (core friends, job network…). Even if it is not a problem for young people who basically display the image they want to show to everyone, it is more crucial for older ones who wants to adapt the information they give. This is why until now there were no universal social networks, because every single one had a different use.

Sorry if what I say is really common sense, it is just to help you keeping that in mind

By the way I love the idea of making series of articles on different aspects of the same subject, it helps not doing very long articles but splitting and organizing ideas.