What?s After Social Networks?

July 24, 2007 By

If you are thinking about launching a social network, think again. And of course, think ahead.

I admit, I’ve always viewed “social networks” as more as a token phrase for the new and naive in Internet business than anything else, given that communities have existed and thrived online long before the first profile page was hammered out on Facebook or MySpace. Media and business both seem very quick to believe that these online platforms are the end-all means that people will engage, and worse, that we as a user base won’t evolve to other forms of interaction.

This kind of narrow mindset isn’t much different than how others once believed the paddle boat would never be replaced by the steam ship, or that we would forever rely on the floppy disc to store information. We all know the end of the story in both of those situations. What surprises me is how few people are thinking about what’s going to happen next, and more importantly, planning ahead for it.

The next phase in "Web 2.0" will have little to do with community and everything to do with media and entertainment, and this will reshape the market as we know it. Up until this year, both entities had little to do with the web – media was still fighting to hang onto its print components, and entertainment still focused on selling seats in movie theaters. Both have finally figured out that it’s a losing battle and are quickly making moves to establish online presence and distribution.

What this means for social networks is increased competition of passive entertainment, and worse, by fierce competitors with deep pockets and giant resources that many existing Internet companies may not have. The only advantage is that entertainment and media are still relatively clueless on how to succeed online and ultimately, may never learn how to make it happen. In order to compete, however, existing social networks and online companies need to think about – and position for – what’s ahead.

Unfortunately, everybody seems focused on the past or the present (including large players), and developing around it instead. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be hearing about new social networks or companies toting the community mantra, but more creative ideas that 1. Play into the entertainment/media trend or 2. Provide some kind of service or solution to either market. Instead, we’ll see lots of failures and fade-away in the coming year, which is too bad because the opportunities at the moment are truly endless.

Showing 7 comments

Patricia at 8:43pm 31st July 2007 @ Justin, damn. I want to spend an hour inside your mind :)

I do agree that mobile is going to blow up and I agree about twitter (you can see what I wrote about Twitter on my blog www.industrygirlblog.com). I do think more applications will be built on social networks, but where I'm coming from in my article is that everybody needs to look ahead (not just us).

Thanks for commenting on my article guys!
Justin Kistner at 5:58pm 31st July 2007 I think the mobile space is the next area. While there were many communities online prior to MySpace and Facebook (all the way back to BBS), those sites opened up networking online to the general public. Users want more mobile functionality and I think the communities to watch out for are Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce (because they are even more user friendly than MySpace and Facebook). Integrating GPS location will change everything. Imagine walking into a room and being able to browse the profiles of those around you. Imagine being able to know if those people have mutual friends. Imagine an automatic message being sent when you enter your friend's favorite bar. Lot of information control will coincide with such rad features to maintain privacy.

But it's more than that. As you pointed out, Patricia, communities have been around long before YASNS, and the ability to integrate with existing and future communities in a more decentralized and standardized way will be key to long term success. Therefore I agree with Marcos that we'll see more APIs. I think we'll also see more widget orientated functionality. The one thing we're missing from the blog world that prevents it from being a social network is permission control connected to identity. I think MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog are in a position to offer identity based permissions that could be integrated with blog CMSs as a plug-in and their existing widgets. Would be nice to see OpenID get some traction in there as well...
Patricia at 3:07pm 31st July 2007 @ Marcos, it isn't that there won't be a place for social networks. It's that I think companies that fixate on them aren't understanding there's already been a shift, and more changes will come.
Mike at 12:04pm 27th July 2007 I don't even care about social networks, I just want to know who this hot chick is??
Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 1:05pm 26th July 2007 I do think that social networking has run its course as well. There are several "winners" that have emerged, and it's time to go to the next evolutionary step, as Patricia points out.
Marcos El Malo at 11:09am 26th July 2007 What makes you think social networking has run its course? I think the demand for better and more sophisticated SN apps is going to continue to drive development, although admittedly that will only be one component.

What think will happen (mostly because I'd like to happen, but there are some clues to indicate it might) is development of more tools and infrastructure for users (yes, users) to develop their own SN sites. We'll see the infrastructure come in the form of APIs, like we've seen with FaceBook and other sites. Tools will take the form of add in modules or roll your own using AJAX and the like. MS and Adobe will be pushing hard for a deal with someone to use their tools as the basis for such an infrastructure. The other trend I see combining with all this is a return to the thin client model, with the server being the internet or "cloud" as the jargony types like to say. But I see the creation of "structured clouds", again through the release of APIs, not to mention the adoption of open standards.
Matt at 1:44pm 24th July 2007 Similar to trends on TV, we are stuck on reality TV, and a million spin offs from that. Before we were stuck on game shows. The US market has a tendancy to borrow from the market overseas, like Asia. Media is king there, but people won't pay for it. I think the next King of media here will be the forward looker that can look past the obvious "social" aspect and won't put an "i" in front of it. The next original thinker should think around it. Now that I would spend money on.