Over Socialised

Posted by Mike Walsh

4/30/06 10:50 PM

Every day I wake up and check my RSS subscriptions, I read about another social network that has been funded with someone else's money. Even the majors are tooling up. Both AOL and the BBC have announced iterations, almost invariably sold internally as being "MySpace Killers".

At some point you have to ask, once people have made the emotional investment in one social networking platform - what are the true switching costs of moving their community and content across to a new one?

It really comes down to Friends vs Functionality. No surprise that the former wins out.

I know for example that there are a dozen other photo sharing sites that are much better than Flickr, but what keeps me locked into my favourite dyslexic brand name is my odd little fan base that dutifully posts comments everytime I post an upload.

The power of friends to prevent social network churn however doesn't mean that the landscape
will be dominated by all the Web2.0 companies started in in 04/05. My view is that there will be increasing verticalisation of social network communities over the next 18 months, as dedicated niches spring up that make it easier for people to connect over specific subject or interest
areas.

That doesn't necessarily mean rebuilding Rome either. An interesting sign of the times is the recently launched Ziki - whichaggregates people's feeds from their various social networking and consumer generated content platforms - and focuses on using tags to help people find each other.

Its all kind of amusing in a surreal sort of way. If the nineties were about getting rich on
dotcoms, the noughties are shaping up to be the decade of new narcissism.


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