Too Cool for Facebook

"I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member."

In the era of social networking, this classic quote from Groucho Marx via Woody Allen has never seemed more timely.

But apparently, a new generation of tech snobs isn't heeding that dictum. For some people, it turns out, even Facebook isn't exclusive enough.

Roger Allen Conner Jr., for example, is way too cool for the Ivy-league spawned social networking darling.

"A lot of social-networking sites are very low-quality," Conner, the 22-year old founder of a North Carolina consulting firm named SiloIQ, told BusinessWeek. "The type of individuals that are on these social-networking sites are generally not well-networked themselves."

And so it goes with so-called "early adopters." Three months ago the buzz was that MySpace, News Corp.'s social networking monstrosity, was the bastion of under-educated, under-compensated palookas.

Now, with Facebook approaching the first anniversary since it opened its doors to the public, it was perhaps inevitable that it would lose the luster it had built as an exclusive club of well-heeled college students.

Conner, you see, "wants powerful friends," according to BusinessWeek. You know, "the kind of people who board private jets after cutting business deals. People who don't get stopped by the bouncer at New York's Bungalow 8 nightclub. People with connections who can open doors and get his company noticed."

You know, people like you and me.

So Conner has joined aSmallWorld, an elite social network which, in the words of its founder Erik Wachtmeister, is not "polluted by people you don't know." Wachtmeister, according to the magazine, is a former Lehman Brothers banker. And a Swedish count.

Wachtmeister isn't the only one building the social networking equivalent of a gated community. The U.S. intelligence community has announced plans to launch its own set of Web 2.0 tools, including an private social network, known as A-Space. So now, presumably, after the next intelligence failure, C.I.A. analysts can congregate online and discuss what went wrong without fear of the public eavesdropping on their communications.

Back in the public sphere, technological fads like Facebook are facing an ever-shortening period of "coolness." As the technoscenti turns up their nose at successive Web 2.0 darlings, we may be headed toward a future where the ultimate social network consists of the only person truly up to snuff.

Yourself.

by Sam Gustin