I have refrained from adding my view to the OpenSocial / Facebook / future of social networking debate, but I read an interesting Advertising Age viewpoint that spawned a thought. If you agree with the quick summary below:

- Facebook’s social networking features will be / is a commodity
- Having an application will cease to be a differentiator for a social network as OpenSocial makes apps available on any network
- The only thing special about Facebook is that everybody is on there. Once data can be passed between networks, that uniqueness is gone.

If you extend on the thought, it’s possible to imagine a world where networks have read/write ability between networks, making the actual network you use as your primary source merely a choice of user interface and a personal badge, but having no different use or value outside of that interface and branding (i.e. no differential functionality or value driven by the network itself or its unique applications).

This dovetails with the recent thoughts from Charlene Li at Forrester, who believes that social networks will “be like air”. Essentially, all around us at all times, but not essentially noticed as such.

What are the lessons we learned from email? Once email providers can send information between each other, the network effects for any particular email provider vanished and the differentiator became the user interface and functionality. Email may not be a significant personal brand at the moment (having a unique, cool-sounding email address is perhaps less important than it was when email first came out), but if email becomes the basis for a social network, then an email address could become a big personal brand. Having an @gmail.com or an @green.org could be a big statement.

If that’s the case, what brand do you want?