Social networks on the way towards knowledge networks

Social web and the ability for us to interact and share our lives in a totally new way with our friends and even strangers is a hallmark of the Internet evolution, but I feel there is still something missing.

When I look at services like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr I see great value, but I also still see limitations. The community and behavior is limited to a certain set of interactions and information defined by services itself and these could be clearly richer than they are now. They do one thing well, but the boundary is very strict.

EarlyStageVC actually has a great write-up on the exact same topic, how web 2.0 is moving towards knowledge networks. The existing services we have are closer to contact databases and not repositories of knowledge, but the tools are there.

If and when this move happens, the utility of social communities will take an immense step forward towards what we need, well formatted, accessable and indexable libraries of information. Then the limitation I feel and Peter Rip has put to words, will go away.