Firstly I am very appreciative of the effort of Terry Anderson to experiement with SNS and the value of trying to recreate some elements of the undergraduate experience of attending classes, being on campus and making social connections outside of the limit of the classroom. It is a great experiment. 

And yet. ( The following comments are meant as feedback not as criticism. ) 

Issue 1. Making students join, set up an account, and blog here as an assignment is not bottom up. It is not organic. I am not an undergrad, I already have my own social and professional network and to be honest am already overwhelmed by SNS in my life and like so many others, now looking to find a way to unhook my life from FB, G+ and Twitter. I have already deleted all personal photos from FB, only look at G+ for tech news and only use Twitter at tech conferences. So I am biased against adding more SNS to my life at this time. 

Issue 2. The objective of having a system that continues on beyond that of an LMS class is very unclear. This objective is stated in the beginning of the Adobe Connect lecture in the topic of Persistence and Networking (Connectivism). Then at the end the very important question is posed by Craig; When do you decide to delete the content? Should you? How long do you leave it? Well, it either is or is not persistant. No? There are disadvantages to persistence. That is why I deleted much of my personal data on FB. 

Issue 3. This is really an extention of Issue 2. The advantage of an on campus face to face social experience for undergrads is that it is a time of exploring oneself and trying on new ideas and forming an identity. Young people try on ideas in discussions, inside and outside classes. All of this is of great value but that value depends on the freedom to change and adapt, throw away old ideas and change. However, the very nature of SNS or text of any kind is that it creates a persistant record of those changes. What is said in a conversation in a campus bar is not preserved. But it may be of great value to the person. This cannot be recreated and should not be recreated in SNS. Everyone recognized this very quickly and stopped putting drunk photos on FB. 

Conclusions:  

The Landing looks more like G+ than FB with an attempt to make groups and circles, but we know how G+ is used mostly by the tech crowd who are willing to commit the time to that level of data detail management, not the normal users. Most everyone has stayed on FB. 

Another SNS? Sorry but bad timing for me as I try to extract myself out of the grip of SNS. 

Some elements of "Social" are best served by being impermanent. We evolved as an intellegent species with very good reasons for forgetting many things in the past. That is healthy. 

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( but of course you know who I am because my email has to be used to register here. )