Social Networking Is 21st Century Email
For all the buzz about Google Buzz you’d think they invented something new. But what’s disruptive isn’t the technology, it’s the 175m unique users already in the Gmail system that they may get to use buzz “for free”. That’s half the audience of FaceBook overnight.
After all, success in the social networking world isn’t really about features, interface or technology — take Twitter, for example, which outsources its interface to third party clients and could repopulate the cetaceans of the world on its own if only the fail whale could be taught to swim. For all the talk of a revolution, news feeds are just a hybrid of email with instant messaging. The new idea was making it multicast – email all of your friends at once with a semi-personal message rather than each one individually with a personal one.
Facebook seems to see the way the wind is blowing and has leaked that it is introducing email to supplement its still-flakey IM service. Google countered by adding social media feeds to email. But what it all comes down to is that these are just messaging platforms and will ultimately follow the same paths as email and IM companies of yore.
In the email world, all of the services integrate so a Gmail user can communicate with a Yahoo user or, likely, a CornerStoreEmail user if such a service existed (and in this great Internet world of ours it almost certainly does). The result of this is that email companies remain somewhat distinct – people select their email provider for the interface, convenience and tools and stay with them to avoid having to distribute a new address. While advertising may not be what it used to be, email remains a good business for site owners though there is no big email company that’s made it as a stand-alone company.
In the IM world, each service elected to keep a walled garden. AIM doesn’t talk to Yahoo which doen’t talk to MSN. If you have friends on multiple networks (and you almost certainly do), you create accounts on each but then you use a third-party client to administer it all (like Adium) or create your own private network with something like Jabber. The IM networks no longer have any contact with their users. Indexable, real-time content, yes, but no opportunity to brand, advertise or sell stuff to their “customers”.
Social media is no different. In the short term, companies will cash in on content and on hopes that they can aggregate and engage massive audiences, but over time the industry will fragment. Those that lower the walls and let in the barbarians should keep a piece of their businesses while those that keep up the walls will likely delegate their businesses to intermediaries. In a few years, will any of them be standalone companies? Not if the model of email or IM is a guide. The barriers to entry are low – companies with established audiences like Google can step in easily (you can imagine Yahoo and MSN are just a few steps behind).
It’s possible that social media is truly a new thing, but it feels perilously like we’ve seen this movie before.
Themocracy
Social networks function better as walled gardens because they are based around “public” content.
Social networks function better as walled gardens because they are based around “public” content. The separate networks serve to organize what would otherwise be chaotic noise, and makes privacy control much simpler. The fact that my LinkedIn network can’t access my facebook profile is a feature.