“Welcome to the social”... Everyone remember that doozy? The social frame of the web seems to be close to running its course. The pour well intentioned social-media movement has become the butt end of jokes… How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant and Misreading The Cluetrain Manifesto . Change is a foot in the way we talk about the old information superhighway. This weekend I noticed a lot of people writing about ways to reframe where we are at with the web and what we (should) do/focus on now.

Jeremiah Owyang – What’s after the Social Web?

p. When I first started this blog, I titled it the “Web Strategy Blog” not the “Social Media blog” as I know there will always be new technologies and new trends, there’s something else coming beyond the social web

(An excellent choice!)

Chris Saad – My Vision for Social Media, Personal Reality

bq. p. Personal Media is about recognizing that people are social and private. They are interested in personal experiences.

(Hmm, I enjoy personal experiences as well!)

Joshua Porter – Activity-Centered Design

p. “most popular web applications can easily be described in terms of the primary activity they support”

(Yes, I do use google for search, amazon/mp3 for buying music and dopplr for sharing trips!)

Okay so the web is changing, people have social AND private lives, and web apps generally serve a primary activity…. and the sky is often blue!? There is obviously some context to those quotes and Im not trying to be a jerk, I swear. I respect those writers and love reading their stuff. But I feel like collectively we, the web geeks, are pawing at something that doesn’t need to be pawed at. Now that”social”as a way to frame the web is nearing its end we are going to see a lot of people trying to push the next big frame that we can look at things through. Trying to define whats next or what is after”social”leads us down a road to, well, the next big thing. Ungh. As much as we all LOVE the next big thing, thats not at ALL what we need right now.

The way I like to think about this transition from the hype laden era of the social-web is that technology is fundamentally about communication.”Social,”the concept, was really nothing new on the web, and creating new ways for people to communicate is always going to be a constant. The different contexts for communication, the objects to communicate around, and the new vehicles for communication are where the action is. At least for me. When I think back to my involvement with technology and the web it has always been heavily social, it has always been about communicating. What has changed is the amount of people using technology to communicate. A whole grip of people have pointed this out in some awesome books you may have read. So as the social web and social media fade away from the headlines I hope we don’t rush for the nextbuzzing label and really spend some time making things that enable something new or unique ( Oh, You Wanted the Douchy Web? )

I beat up on them a bit in the beginning of this post, but another way to look at Chris, Josh, and Jeremiah’s ponitfications that seemingly state the obvious is that they are nice reminders of some constants.

• The web is always changing – so don’t get hung up on what to label the next big thing.
• The web has always been rich with social value and personal value – its not either or.
• Good web experiences often revolve around a single activity – so focus on those social objects !
• The web has been and will continue to be about people communicating.