Image: That’s what she twittered, Robert Scoble

(This, in case it’s not yet clear, would be a bad thing.)

There was a time when I used to love MySpace. We’ll call it ‘BF’, since it basically lasted a year or so Before I joined Facebook.

I liked MySpace because it connected me to things in the outside world that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise accessed: primarily cool parties and people running vaguely interesting magazine projects. Back in BF, I even recall doing an interview with a PhD student in which I effused about how you wouldn’t know about anything remotely interesting about Sydney’s nightlife unless you were on MySpace. And given the novelty of most of Sydney’s clubs for anyone over the age of 21, this is probably still true.

(This isn’t to say that there’s nothing worth going to, only that you’re not going to have much chance of finding it if you just rock up to the Ivy or World Bar in a cocktail dress. The interesting stuff is promoted through social networks, and at that time, MySpace was one of the main networks it was promoted through.)

Then I discovered Facebook, and within six months MySpace was dead to me. Why log into MySpace to find out about those hipsters with their ‘clever’ parties and vaguely interesting publications when I could log into Facebook and instantly access every person I’ve ever remotely cared about?

What concerns me about Twitter is that, for me at least, its appeal is similar to MySpace’s. It’s a way to access cool people, projects and cultures I otherwise wouldn’t. For all the talk of Sydney/Australia/The World being “small”, the thing I love about it is that just when I think I know it inside out, I discover someone or something that inspires me. Twitter - and I think this is one of Tumblr’s strengths as well - facilitates that.

But if MySpace - and every other internet fad over the past decade - is any indication, it ain’t going to last.

And that’s fine - I don’t need it to. But as much value as ambient relationship-building/networking can have (and I think it can have a lot of value, so long as it’s not the only thing you have in your life), I wonder what’s going to happen to all those Twitter relationships once Twitter is no longer relevant.

As Chris Brogan wrote the other day, there’s a lot you can learn about someone from what they post on social networking sites (and if there’s any truth to the idea that spending time online makes us less socially capable, maybe it’s a growing dependence on that ambient information). But if the relationships end as soon as the site does, what was the point of having them in the first place?