Here, have some meta-essays on social networking

[foxfirefey]

Internet companies and the billion dollar money drain:

The root cause of these poor returns is the lack of sustainable and user-friendly monetization mechanism beyond the unprofitable display advertising business model. Ad-funded Internet models are a more than $40 billion money drain...There is simply not enough online advertising money or minutes spent online to pay for the billions invested thus far in Internet-related deals by venture capital and corporate venture capital over the past ten years.

The Social Graph is Neither -- Interesting essay about the inherent problems with making an open social graph standard.

Why Google+ is still not working for humans