friends and family was Social Networking 1.0: something imported from the analog world that, as time goes on, will be viewed as inferior to the far richer universe that is Social Networking 2.0.

What makes Twitter the company valuable is not Twitter the app or 140 characters or @names or anything else having to do with the product: rather, it’s the interest graph that is nearly priceless. More specifically, it is Twitter identities and the understanding that can be gleaned from how those identities are used and how they interact that matters.

What I increasingly realize, though, is that separating my identities on Twitter does not mean a lesser experience, but a far superior one; social interaction in any medium is always a balance between self-expression and the accommodation of others

The magic of the Internet, though, is that you can be whatever you want to be:

public broadcast mediums are Social Networking 1.0 as well.

Remember that the key characteristic of v1 digital products is that they simply copy what already exists offline. For Facebook that meant digitizing connections between friends and family, and for Twitter it meant broadcasting conversations as if you were sitting at a bar.

The problem is that digital makes analog goods worse: a lot of what your friends and family believe is boring or objectionable, and conversations constrained by the geography of a bar simply don’t translate to a worldwide audience.

What truly makes a category is v2: products that are only possible because of the unique properties of digital.

having one identity is a core principle for Facebook, which is great for advertising if nothing else, but at odds with the desire of many to be different parts of themselves to different people in different contexts.

the role for both products will be as a bridge between attention-focused products on one side, and private interest-defined trusted groups on the other.

The problem with forcing everyone to be their “whole selves” for the world, whether they want to or not, is that it becomes strikingly difficult to find common ground. After all, there is always something about everyone that is annoying or off-putting.

v2 social networking allows people to be themselves in all the different ways they wish to be, the more likely it is they become close to people who see other parts of the world in ways that differ from their own.