Will the backlash against social networks - because there will be one when the media tires of the topic - result in anti-social networks?

There will be, if there's a way to monetize it.

We need a filter to block all the invites from friends at other social networks. Sometimes I feel I get more invites than I do "official notifications" that I've won the UK online lottery. (Disclosure: I apparently won the UK online lottery three times last week; other weeks, I've won four times.)

In a New York Times editorial notebook, "A Secret Society of 30 Million," Verlyn Klinkenborg writes about the problems he's encountered in "the many worlds of social networking on the web:

• "I get wind of a new site, pay it a visit and discover that it already has a population four times the size of some midsized companies -- everyone speaking the local dialect, taboos and kinship patterns well worked out, a robust economy and brisk trading with other social-networking sites."

He concludes the piece, writing, "I hope there will be room soon for some anti-social Web sites -- places on the Web where you can go to be alone, to hide from your "friends."