Social value revisited?
From the Flickr of mag3737
The conventional thinking in social media is that the value of a social network is directly tied to the number of users/members. The huge valuations placed on companies like Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin are directly tied to the number of users in each network. However,it seems to me there’s a bit of a problem with this thinking.
As I wrote last week, I think that the real value in social media resides not with the networks but instead with the users. It is with other people that people want to connect/interact – not really with social networks. Consider the ease with which super networkers like Robert Scoble or Jason Calcanis are able to move from one social network to another bringing along hundreds (sometimes thousands of followers) and it’s difficult to see how any social network can consider its users or user-base a proprietary asset.
Judging by the rise and fall of most social networks, it feels that the best any have been able to do is “borrow” some of this value for a period of time. To me this is further vindication for Google’s social media strategy of building social features into existing sites and properties. Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, etc. are transitory places at which we’ve decided to interact with friends and colleagues. They aren’t permanent structures and, I think, can vanish as quickly as they appeared.
Am I missing something?
Charles Frith Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 11:48 pmOnly one thought has occured to me which is that as we age we like nostalgia. I can see a retro myspace/facebook surge in the future. Like staying in and watching crappy movies on TV.
Anyway just a thought!
David Esrati Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 2:22 pmSocial networks- (like this one, Blogger) are nothing other than “the man” asking the sharecroppers to till his fields.
That’s right- if you don’t own the server space, you are nothing but a digital sharecropper.
We saw the collapse of the AOL walled community- and we’ll see these social networks lose velocity as people realize their content is being whored for advertising dollars and profile building without compensation.
When it comes down to it- in the end, it’s all about what’s in it for me, and as servers and web tech gets demystified, the titans of social media will lose their farm hands and then the farm.
Adam Says:
July 17th, 2008 at 3:35 pmTrue.
People like to put their friends in new contexts as a way to test/challenge/reassert the existing group pecking order. Smart pack leaders rush to the new spaces first, else someone lower down he ranks takes the initiative and claims first-finder bragging rights, thus lowering the leader’s perceived fitness. That’s the sort of tribal behaviour we see with Team Scoble: A symbolic leader dragging around a bunch of hangers-on, all itching to claim the next new space as their very own and grab the affections of the group as a whole.
It’s all a bit boring really. Who cares if Facebook fails, Ning fails, Twitter fails. There are as many new socialnet opportunites as there are useful idiots to join them. Google wins the game by not playing ‘the game’ but leading the sort people who should know better into believing they are.
Adrian Says:
July 18th, 2008 at 11:05 am@david esrati I like the metaphor of sharecropper! I think there’s a post in there.