As the mighty Twitter launches its 'people you should be following' tool and Facebook announces it now has a fifth of the world's population signed up, a few thoughts occur:
1. Anyone considering a bid for Twitter should pause for a moment. Yes, the world is Twitter-tastic as I type. In fact, we are probably only days away from David Cameron telling the country we're all being laid off via this particular medium. But exactly how long do you think it's going to last?
People are fickle, to say the least. I'd say if there was an award ceremony for fickleness, with gongs handed out at a swanky Park Lane restaurant with accompanying dinner cooked by Jamie, then people would sweep the board. Put it this way - do you think Rupert Murdoch wakes each morning and thanks the sweet heavens that he spent squillions buying the now widely ignored MySpace? He does not.
2. There's probably only one roll of the dice left in the clamour for untold fortunes from social networking websites. So, how's this for an idea? An anti-social networking site. Exciting features (or 'apps' as we're supposed to call them) would include:
- an area where one could post pictures of people with whom you wished to have no contact whatsoever. And tag the ones you actually wished would meet with a freak yachting accident.
- a pop-up window you could activate which allowed you 164 characters all of which have to be expletives.
- a facility for compiling a list of people you don't know and don't want to.
- a facility for compiling a list of people you do know and wish you didn't.
- a scrolling javascript banner advising visitors, in no uncertain terms, to leave you alone.
- a search engine allowing you to track people with whom you went to school and with one click delete them from your page and ensure there is zero possibility they will ever email you with news of the birth of their sixth screaming progeny and their burgeoning career as an assistant manager at Burtons.
- a weekly email newsletter that implores you to leave the service and get on with your miserable, deperate life so that at least you can enjoy some privacy.
I'm thinking of calling it nobodyisthatinterestedinyou.com or stayoutofmylife.net or twatter.co.uk
3. Don't imagine we've 'arrived'. We haven't.
This isn't the end it's a mere sliver of the start. Social media is simply a foothold on a very long (and possibly endless) digital climb. I have absolutely no doubt a developer in a company or more probably, a bedroom, is spewing out code righty now, that will become the basis of something quite obvious, but quite wonderful. Something that will make us regard Facebook and Twitter as quaint distractions. And sooner than we think.
This is a genuine stumbling block in the web game. You are often as close as a few months from being out invented. The lifespan of any successful internet platform is measurably short. Remember GeoCities? Remember Friends Re-United? Even Second Life? Nothing lasts forever, but in this arena, nothing really lasts at all.
4. When is anybody going to make a buck? Don't misunderstand - I'm as heartily sick of the capitalist free market as the next pinko. But these massive sites must have a better business plan than 'Let's just wait for someone to give us a big cheque and leave them to figure it out'.
Unless the new economic model is 'pro-bono' and all future media outlets will simply thrive on goodwill and good fun, real money making has to enter the equation as some point.
Facebook has been running an advertising programme for a while now, but it hardly has Adwords quaking in its boots. And Twitter now has sponsored trending topics (not sure how paying for something to be a trend works, but there it is). MySpace looks doomed to lose money until News Corporation gets completely fed up, despite trying to re-invent itself as a music industry hub and poor Bebo is all but dead.
Traditional advertising models don't really sit comfortably in this brave new world but the commercial efforts of the social media giants seem to closely resemble the 'old ways' and just don't have the same ring of innovation as the sites themselves.
So, if social networks are ever to be truly profitable, they need to have the same 'lightbulb' moment when considering their balance sheets as they had when they dreamed up their user experience.
1. Anyone considering a bid for Twitter should pause for a moment. Yes, the world is Twitter-tastic as I type. In fact, we are probably only days away from David Cameron telling the country we're all being laid off via this particular medium. But exactly how long do you think it's going to last?
People are fickle, to say the least. I'd say if there was an award ceremony for fickleness, with gongs handed out at a swanky Park Lane restaurant with accompanying dinner cooked by Jamie, then people would sweep the board. Put it this way - do you think Rupert Murdoch wakes each morning and thanks the sweet heavens that he spent squillions buying the now widely ignored MySpace? He does not.
2. There's probably only one roll of the dice left in the clamour for untold fortunes from social networking websites. So, how's this for an idea? An anti-social networking site. Exciting features (or 'apps' as we're supposed to call them) would include:
- an area where one could post pictures of people with whom you wished to have no contact whatsoever. And tag the ones you actually wished would meet with a freak yachting accident.
- a pop-up window you could activate which allowed you 164 characters all of which have to be expletives.
- a facility for compiling a list of people you don't know and don't want to.
- a facility for compiling a list of people you do know and wish you didn't.
- a scrolling javascript banner advising visitors, in no uncertain terms, to leave you alone.
- a search engine allowing you to track people with whom you went to school and with one click delete them from your page and ensure there is zero possibility they will ever email you with news of the birth of their sixth screaming progeny and their burgeoning career as an assistant manager at Burtons.
- a weekly email newsletter that implores you to leave the service and get on with your miserable, deperate life so that at least you can enjoy some privacy.
I'm thinking of calling it nobodyisthatinterestedinyou.com or stayoutofmylife.net or twatter.co.uk
3. Don't imagine we've 'arrived'. We haven't.
This isn't the end it's a mere sliver of the start. Social media is simply a foothold on a very long (and possibly endless) digital climb. I have absolutely no doubt a developer in a company or more probably, a bedroom, is spewing out code righty now, that will become the basis of something quite obvious, but quite wonderful. Something that will make us regard Facebook and Twitter as quaint distractions. And sooner than we think.
This is a genuine stumbling block in the web game. You are often as close as a few months from being out invented. The lifespan of any successful internet platform is measurably short. Remember GeoCities? Remember Friends Re-United? Even Second Life? Nothing lasts forever, but in this arena, nothing really lasts at all.
4. When is anybody going to make a buck? Don't misunderstand - I'm as heartily sick of the capitalist free market as the next pinko. But these massive sites must have a better business plan than 'Let's just wait for someone to give us a big cheque and leave them to figure it out'.
Unless the new economic model is 'pro-bono' and all future media outlets will simply thrive on goodwill and good fun, real money making has to enter the equation as some point.
Facebook has been running an advertising programme for a while now, but it hardly has Adwords quaking in its boots. And Twitter now has sponsored trending topics (not sure how paying for something to be a trend works, but there it is). MySpace looks doomed to lose money until News Corporation gets completely fed up, despite trying to re-invent itself as a music industry hub and poor Bebo is all but dead.
Traditional advertising models don't really sit comfortably in this brave new world but the commercial efforts of the social media giants seem to closely resemble the 'old ways' and just don't have the same ring of innovation as the sites themselves.
So, if social networks are ever to be truly profitable, they need to have the same 'lightbulb' moment when considering their balance sheets as they had when they dreamed up their user experience.
