No one really knows why birds migrate. Scientists can conjecture all they want, but until a Canadian goose pipes up and says, “Yeah, it’s because of food and a safe place to breed,” we can only guess. If that actually happens, my bet is migratory patterns will be the least of our worries.

Like birds, the flocks of social networking users tend to move from one place to another (though not often back) in our online environment. While the flock seems to have settled on Facebook recently, where shall we go next? My hypothesis is that we, too, are looking for food (connection to those of like mind) and a safe place to breed (privacy or freedom from the intrusion of marketing messages). But to analyze where we’re going, we must understand where we’ve been.