Josh Catone asks: Who can compete with Facebook? The obvious answer, as he writes, would be MySpace, Google or Yahoo!
But he offers another interesting thought: the new competitors are start pages, such as pageflakes and netvibes. I like that thought! I am a heavy user of netvibes. The configuration possibilities are endless and it is very conveniently to use.
If I could combine something like that with the social component of facebook: Voila, there would be a winner! So if netvibes offers a widget through which I can manage my facebook stuff, I would only have few occasions for visiting the actual facebook site.
On the other hand, if netvibes tries to implement their own social network it will be increasingly difficult for them to lure away users from other platforms, especially the longer they wait.
Admittingly, users can move away like swarm or a flock of birds.
But: the more contacts users have within a single platform, the less likely they are to move away. That’s the inherent stickiness of social networks.
The longer netvibes waits, the more difficult it will become to attract any users from facebook or others. (Especially since facebook and myspace are not just going to wait for doomsday, they will optimise their platforms at the same time.)
Summarising: could startpages be the new competitors? They could be, but for now I doubt it. Prove me wrong, especially you, netvibes (please).
Wo ich sonst so bin...
What we really, really, REALLY need next is a separation of the underlying social network from the applications that run on it.
The social network will provide some sort of „protocol layer“ for establishing identity and interconnectedness. Building on that layer, applications could be made „social aware“. From news sites to web e-mail, from music subscriptions to shopping for electronics.
Freeing social from the walled gardens of MySpace, LinkedIn, XING, Facebook (yes, even Facebook) et al. surely push innovation to the next level.
It will free up resources by ending the platform wars. Instead of building new social platforms, people will have to think about bringing real value to people through new social applications.
It will level the playing field by ending the rush for network effects (i.e. who scales up fastest wins). Lower barriers to entry. New applications hit the ground running — bringing that much more competition to the marketplace.
It will bring the long tail into the social web. Even the smallest site or service can be social aware.
Web 3.0 anyone?
I am not sure I understand…
But if I understand correctly, you think that any of the usual suspects (i.e. facebook) will be obsolete, instead our experience will be completely widgetized, with an underlying _invisible_ social „kernel“, that will make the connection between the widgets we place all across our preferred web experience and journey?
Interesting thought, but how would such a „kernel“-provider make their money, if the contents are widgetized from somewhere different?
Quite so, and more!
The „social kernel“ will be something users won’t worry about much anymore – maybe even something like a commodity.
But building on that kernel will be lots and lots of applications that users really care about. Special purpose widgets, MySpace like self-promotion sites, XING/LinkedIn like business networks, friend-of-friend dating sites, and probably many more.
But the real innovation will be in integrating social features into any and all online experiences. Imagine Amazon recommending products that your business relations recently bought. Or going to NYTimes.com and getting a list of articles that your friends have been reading. Or going to Napster and finding your very personal „Top 100 list“ — created according to last week’s tastes of your music buddies.
And building on that some more aggregation: Sites that will aggregate and show you *all* the stuff (web sites; articles; videos; news items; books; songs; electronics; job openings; …) that’s hot in certain parts of your social network.
Making it work will involve quickly building a social network to rival Facebook & MySpace in size. At the same time, it must be opened to developers everywhere, so they can build applications to draw in more people. Of course we’re talking hen&egg here — but with some clever initial apps (or high profile cooperations), this could be overcome.
In terms of technology, there’s probably several ways of making it fly: A distributed (P2P) architecture that starts as a browser plug-in may be viable.
How to make money off of it is another question — but there’s probably a few big players out there who stand to gain A LOT from an open, interoperable social network. Basically all content or commerce driven internet companies that own a proprietary one yet (Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft).
Very interesting thoughts, I have to admit! I was wondering how you were thinking of linking all these scattered apps and widgets together, but you’re right. A P2P solution would be viable. Sort of like Skype or Joost. It could be a plugin for your browser or a desktop application that identifies you whatever you do. (Imaging adding these social components into your desktop software, i.e. word, photoshop, itunes, etc…)
Maybe the Skype guys are already working on something this? If not they should be. Or we will. How about it?