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Social Networking Sites: Dead in Two Years

Posted by Nick O'Neill on May 21st, 2008 1:53 PM

I recently held a poll on Social Times about whether or not users believed that social networking sites would eventually become “like air” as Charlene Li of Forrester Research has previously asserted. Most people didn’t believe it but after seeing the new Facebook profile design, I’m pretty confident that social networking sites are dead in the way they currently exist.

The idea that I need to go to another website to see what my friends are up to is absolutely ridiculous. Why do I need to go to Facebook to get updates on the relationship statuses of my friends or to find out that my friend John recently uploaded a photo of his trip to Hawaii. FriendFeed already accomplishes some of these things but the idea that I need to do all of this from one website is ridiculous.

Within the next two years we are going to witness the proliferation of desktop social control panels which leverage various networks the same way that IM clients like Digsby and Gabtastik currently let users leverage any of their chat systems. There will soon be a social protocol developed for updating your social data via Facebook and eventually other sites including MySpace, Bebo, etc.

Think I’m crazy? You have a right to think so but this is my blog so I can make any assertion that I want! This isn’t that crazy of an idea when you think about it though. There’s already FriendFeed support within Twhirl, we are only a few steps away from Facebook support. Can you think of any other ways to extend social networking features to the desktop? While I don’t think that social networking is dead by any means, I think that the existence of stand alone sites will soon be passé.

Posted in Social Networking
  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 10 Comments

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    Personally, I think that facebook adds very little value in and of itself. I adore sites like twitter, flickr and linked in -- sites that do one thing and do it well. Facebook tries to be all things to all people and what you end up with is kind of a weird mess.
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    Have to say I agree with you.
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    I think you're right to an extent. Unless these social sites adapt to where the internet is going which is a Web 2.5 era of online applications. Most of them are trying to implement this, Facebook and Myspace have, but they were not expecting the outcome of this. The virality and spamming usage for some of these applications is just a big turn off. A lot of people are already over the whole social networking phase and don't even bother logging into their accounts anymore.
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    Nick, you're right on the money on this one. The "social" in the social web is really just people interacting. So using several different services and sites is going to be part of that. Flickr for photos, Twitter for status, YouTube for video, BlogTV for live video, whatever... It'll be the ability of a local cross-platform client that ties it together and also publishes this information on our blogs. Good piece!

    Rick
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    Totally agree.
    However, it does need to account for one thing. In markets where social networking is yet untapped, things could take a very different turn - perhaps not from an economist's point of view but definitely from a sociological perspective.
    Anywhich way, I too believe that A unified platform shall eventually replace the current scheme of things.
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    I know why I think it can be possible to see what people do in different networks, but can you say why it's absolutely ridiculous that you're going to specific sites to see the activity that they facilitate?
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    Certainly the "extended web" is quickly becoming a reality. Mobile will be an important interface, as will specific desktop applications.

    We still need a "container" for all this data and the large social sites will likely continue to play a role as a data pool. Think "yellow pages" for the web - basically a social index server.

    The interesting social interactions are going to devolve to smaller communities of common interest. There are over 4000 social networks now and many of the faster growing communities are thematic.

    And younger people will use FB and others as the new "email", e-invite and e-match.com where the size of the communities actually works for them....

    What a wonderful new world we live in.
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    I don't think you're crazy - in fact I've been thinking on similar lines for a while. Through projects like OpenSocial, DiSo, microformats and XMPP I can see the current social networks being splayed out across each other, across individual's blogs and on to the desktop.

    Each site will become simply one possible entrance to that social landscape (like a border crossing-point) where all your information streams converge in a particular way.
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    Just like how email service providers made it possible to send email to each other i.e. became open and facilitated interaction, the new walled gardens known as social networking sites are following suit.

    People still use Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail to manage their email (or multiple email accounts) and these people aren't dumb enough to not learn from the past.

    We will still use somebody's tool to manage our social communications via the web and OpenSocial is among the first to make that move. Will Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo or some new entrant be the one we use in the future - who knows - all we know is that walled gardens have limited a limited shelf life.

    The new tools will become like email - open to information from outside but still managed within a specific tool.
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    You have all got to be kidding me, right? Desktop software? Where have you all been lately? Desktop software is already a dinosaur in comparison to what is going on virtually.

    You have forgotten that little thing you carry in your purses and pockets. Mobile integration is everything. If you don't think that mobile apps are going to take over where desktop software is failing, you are living in the past.

    The number one thing that mobile apps have over desktop applications is that there is no software to distribute. Updates are immediate. No overhead.

    Nick, you do have a point that overall integration of all social sites is coming, I have been predicting that for a long time. I see it as a plugin to our blogs though.

    But look at it this way, I just got this comment today:

    "I have been finding Chris Lang posts all over the internet and am seriously impressed with the amount of knowledge you have in the white listing department. I myself am dealing with white listing everyday and am finding it a very difficult and lengthy process..."

    "Finding Chris Lang all over the internet" says it all, I am everywhere. If you don't think I am, Google Chris Lang.

    It is all due to social site participation.

    Social networking sites dead in two years? More like Yahoo, MSN and most of Google's dominant share will be gone, replaced by social networks.

    Of course social networks as we know them now will be gone, but dead? This is like Bill Gates saying spam will be gone in two years (he did say that two years ago) or when Bill said that CPU power would not rise above where it is now (that was five years ago).

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