The Facebook killer is coming … in 2011
Online Social Networks are most certainly the flavor of the month – it seems like everyone has one, wants one, has an idea for one or is undoubtedly a part of one. However, having a successful social network doesn’t seem to be enough – competitors in the market are striving to be the leader of the pack. Many that do pick-up traction and become successful will end up as another social network as opposed to being successful as “the social network”. Of course, why would that be a problem, right? Being another Facebook or MySpace is nothing to complain about even if it generates a third of the user -base. The market is over-saturated, but with everyday that goes by, it appears that there is room for more!
The idea behind web based social networks is that people want to be where other people are. The traditional social networking mentality falls apart when the masses either never conform or do conform and then eventually leave for the next big thing — it would be naive to think there won’t be a next big thing. The one element often overlooked in the online social space is that the primary demographic is on a much different and much shorter evolutionary cycle than any other demographics in other markets — they usually evolve, change and grow in a four to eight year cycle. The primary reason for is this is that the demographic is in the 12 to 28 year old range — a person radically changes values, focus, social context and lifestyles from the age of 12 to 16, 16 to 20, from the age of 20 to 24 and from the age of 24 to 28 (the pattern matches closely to the shift from middle school to high school to college to the workforce to life independence/stability).
The first massively adopted popular online social network was the America Online community (yes, it was a social network — just not one in the capacity most think of social networks today). AOL emerged in the mainstream in 1994/1995, then around 1998/99 Yahoo.com replaced (or filled the void) and at about 2002/03 Friendster, MySpace and a variety of others started to appear and dominate the space as pure social networks (sites whose only purpose was that of a social context). And then right on cue we get to 2006/07 and Facebook emerges as a true MySpace killer; not only was Facebook better but it was time for a new king of the hill. Every generation of young web-users wants their own social community to build and define, not the community their elders are a part of. Without fail, for almost the past 15 years a new social network has arose to replace the previous dominance in the market exactly four years since that dominant force had gained mass adoption.
From AOL, to Yahoo!, to MySpace and Facebook the core has always been the same. There are people, photos, conversations, notes, games, videos, chatting, cards, connections, messages, blogs/journals, friends and a variety of common place social features (and I think the game of Scrabble was popular on them all) – each service has its time as king of the hill; but all were replaced almost exactly four years from their starting time at the top. It has little to do with emerging technologies, advertising, funding, features or the economy. It is simply a reality of the demographic that leads and evolves this space. It as though we are all characters out of ‘Peter Pan’ — the older we get, the more we forget. We forget that this ever influential demographic is highly impressionable while contradictorily independent. It is that youthful demographic between 12 and 18 that drives these growing trends that ultimately pushes one leader off the top and nudges a new to rein king.
I strongly believe that the future of the web, especially in the context of social networking, is going to be on the niche. Ning is a perfect example of a temporary solution to a large problem. People flock to Ning because there is no alternative that can do it right just yet — but if Ning has taught us anything; it is that users want their own networks and at the same time want a larger network that connects them (but they don’t want Ning). There is a lot of power in the existing social networks — but they must and will evolve (we’ve seen the trend move that way already with the emergence of Facebook Apps). Right now, the big players in the social space are being fueled by their user-generated content — users proprietary to that specific network. A powerful social network would be one where content was provided by all users (inside and outside the specific social network) — some emerging social networks are trying to move towards this model. My only issue there is that you still must play inside that one social network — they are just making a much bigger network with customizable flexibility to give the niche sites on the web the ability to have a uniquely customizable social network. These emerging networks business model will be successful because the concept of building a social network that gives niche site owners more control and flexibility is a growing demand and popular trend.
However, I believe the true future of this market space is in thinking much like Google with “OpenSocial” — the future of online social networks will be one where the MySpace and Facebook’s of the world live together more in harmony than apart as competitors — each network for a specific demographic and further differentiated by aesthetic presence, usability, flexibility as well as quantity and quality of the user base. With a system similar to OpenSocial in place, the major social networks can become a hub for web based user content as opposed to their specific user generated content. The real issue with the existing networks is that now we have a variety of places to upload photos, to blog, to have a contacts list and create/maintain our professional resume (along with a variety of other activities) and different audiences viewing that data (so, the necessity to double-post becomes greater). If YouTube can be a place for video and flickr a place for photos and blogger a place for blogs and linkedin a place for resumes and myspace a place for friends — and then you can create a global social network aggregate that is fueled by this content, then you have created the future of the online social space.
If history truly repeats itself, then Facebook will step down from the king of the hill four years from its popularity over MySpace as every leader before it had for almost the past fifteen years.
- August 25th, 2008
- 24comments
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I’m glad you mention AOL as the “first” social network. The Buddy List remains to this day the most persistent (and accurate) social network for most users. AOL hasn’t entirely successfully capitalized on this. AIM Pages was a large attempt, but management cut it off at the knees. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be seem to enjoy the moving-target management style.
And there were of course social networks prior to AOL, but with respect to massively adopted social networks; AOL was the first.
This kind of makes me think that the BBS’s I used a long time ago were pretty much dial-up versions of Ning…
And as for this era of almost-portability and almost-extensibility, I wonder if we’ll stay on an Olympic cycle or if one site can stay sticky like a couple search engines have.
As a side, it’s kind of nice to purge contacts every few years…maybe on the next time through it’ll be cliche to seek out friends from high school just for the heck of it.
Absolutely perfect. This subject has been on my mind all year and I agree 100% with your conclusions. I haven’t looked at google’s OpenSocial yet - it figures google would be the one to tie it all together. I have a couple ideas I’m knocking around, too.
One challenge I can foresee with the one unifying network, is that it would slurp information from these different sites without attributing credit. I mean, is a link-through enough, compared to making the users actually put eyeballs on their banners? I.e. “Bondibox has added Martin as a friend on Facebook and a contact on LinkedIn.”
If I were a developer of LinkedIn or Facebook, would I be satisfied with this RSS type subscription to my website? Just something to ponder.
I think it comes back to the idea that we should strive to be good at one thing and work with others that are better at the other things. It has becoming a growing annoyance to have to create an evite event for my non-facebook friends and a facebook event for my non-evite friends. Or to have to upload the same photo album to Flickr and Facebook because two different contact groups use the services differently.
I do agree with you that credit and profit will be highly questionable when we start asking the social networks to be more social with one another. I am hoping that the demands of the audience will win over the business objectives of the networks. Right now Facebook is the king of the hill and with that power comes their ability to control; but that power maybe gone by 2011 and the new top dog might have more social intentions!
The team over at LivingSocial is doing an amazing job at taking a good step forward. Building applications that work across the different networks and whose data is shared consistently. Now the same social interaction one has on Facebook can be had on MySpace without having or needing a MySpace account; amazing things!
(Related to what bondibox and Martin discuss above…)
While I’m intrigued by the work being done in the area of cross-social-network compatibility (portable social networks and the like), I see it as a problem that only we, the 1% of highly-connected early-adopters, have. The other 99% of users likely aren’t on a dozen networks, so the “need” for portability just isn’t there. Facebook is enough for these users.
Again, I’m not trying to disparage the interesting and challenging work being done in the area, just highlighting that the “problem” being solved is not a problem the majority of users have.
@Jason Garber,
I totally agree with that. I agree that the problem doesn’t exist for most of the web users — however, I’d say it isn’t solving for a problem that doesn’t exist more so than it is creating a solution that we don’t yet know we want. I was pretty content with AOL NetFind and Yahoo! search before Google came around; because my context for how searching should be/could be was defined by them … and I would have argued that there is no need for “another search engine” — and I think the masses would have agreed with me. I was actually sort of pissed when my freshman English professor demanded we use Google back in 1999.
Many users are not using services like Vimeo or Flickr, instead they use YouTube and Facebook or MySpace for the similar functionality. But they do it because the features are built into the network they are already members of. Why use another photo service other than Facebook if you are a Facebook user? Most are not asking for cross network compatibility or sync — but if it were here and the next king of the hill brought it to us; it’ll change the social context forever.
Your four year cycle is a fascinating observation, and I think in many cases it’s quite true.
You mentioned a social network aggregate. It seems like SocialThing aims to be something similar to what you described, as a place where you can access all of your social networks.
@Ted,
Thanks for the comment on the four year cycle observation — it is scary to think it has been happening like clock-work for almost 15 years! I think I first jumped on the internet in 1993 with AOL; so this trend has been happening as long as I’ve known the internet.
And to SocialThing … I think they have the right idea and will, like LivingSocial, prove to be important markers in a progressive step-forward; but not the ultimate solution. SocialThing now is more of an aggregate of content, and the business model of aggregating the aggregaters is very much played out (but still fundable).
To me, an ideal social networking platform is one that is simple and basic in its utilitarian features (like Google, does one thing and does it well) but then ultimately built atop of a much bigger, much more powerful entity. And entity that has blogging but lets Blogger power my blog and has photos but lets flickr power my albums and has video but lets vimeo power my videos and has events but lets Upcoming power my events.
Imagine when Social gets social!
One thing I should mention is that the four year cycle doesn’t equate to death, but each of the services after falling from the top after four years on ultimately change their core business models within the next four years. So, four years on top and another four to recover with a 360 turn around within an eight year period. Look at AOL from 1995 to 2003; is it even the same company? Look at Yahoo from 1999 to 2007; where did all of those games and directories go? MySpace is not adopting as quickly as it has changed little since 2006 and that will most likely be its death. I do believe Facebook is now large enough and smart enough to evolve, while it is unquestionable (IMHO) that Facebook will fall from the top by 2011; I think its ability to evolve and adapt and remain a powerful force much like Yahoo (sorry AOL, but you screwed up too much) is highly likely.
@Martin Having some sort of data exchange, portability, backup, or some other similarly-defined feature would certainly facilitate the migration of the herd from one network to the next (as we’ve seen with Friendster to MySpace to Facebook to…). So to that end, I can see it as a “must have” for the average user.
Playing the cynic, I can’t see a huge push on the part of the major social networks to create this sort of facility for the sole reason that they don’t *want” it to be easy for users to leave. This would be one of those sticky situations where business goals override user goals. Potentially, of course.
I think you said it best! We need “some sort of data exchange, portability, backup, or some other similarly-defined feature” — I think that will be an amazing future. I actually bought a dumb domain thinking it could be a service similar to this with respect to functionality; runsync.com — ability to constantly run in the backgroun and sync all of your data across platforms.
I agree with you, I don’t think the “current” major social networks want this at all … I think most will go out of their way to ensure it never happens. But, that is why I am waiting for 2011 … I hope the new king of the hill shares your same sentiment.
I agree with you 100% on the existence of the change cycle, both because of the lure of the new and because it helps with the periodic need to reinvent one’s persona and shed old friends.
I think that the next major cycle will be more different than what we are presently imagining, with not only Facebook losing its dominance in its present role but all social networks losing their status as platforms or even hubs in more portable social networks. Instead, I’d guess that the next cycle will allow each person to create their own way of interacting socially on the web, with complete customization of all the components of interactions. Think something like each person having the option to create their dream mashup of Facebook + LinkedIn + Basecamp + ITunes + YouTube + Twitter + Skype + Flickr + Second Life + real-world interactions + lots of things that don’t yet exist.
The role of the former social networks may turn into suppliers of components available for mashups. The winners will be both those entities that supply the best components and those entities that learn how to make life successful for the users - providing pre-packaged solutions for the inexperienced, and completely customizable options for the experienced. Whether these winners will be reincarnations of some of the present social network providers, Google, existing players in other areas, or brand new players is yet to be determined.
Not to mention later this year BuddyPress is gonna come out.
Then every website that has a forum/blog/etc will have a social network too.
Imagine: NewtNet.com.
Regarding niche social networks, I think there must be a lot of people/businesses out there who, say a year ago, would have been reluctant to start a social networking site aimed at a specific target audience. However, I agree that now that the larger “generic” social networks like Facebook become saturated, people will want to interact more with like-minded “niche-buddys”. An example of which is The Bridge Network which we recently launched. This is aimed specifically at ex-Olympics rowers with a view to increasing the target user-base to all ex-Olympians.
However, I also agree that OpenSocial and it’s ilk, once mature enough, will be indispensable if we are to manage all these disparate networks that we may all become part of.
*sigh* Do you know how much time and effort it takes to maintain a decent facebook profile? Its becoming exhausting. I dont want to be sucked into this again!
facebook will be king for a longgggg time
I disagree with calling the buddy list a “social network”.
You can only see who *you* are friends with. That’s not a network. That’s an address book.
As I said in the article, “it would be naive to think there won’t be a next big thing”. And ultimately, the older each of us gets, the less control we have over that.
The younger generation on their four-year cycle will pick a new network for them and adopt to it in masses, and because there is mass adoption among that demographic, the rest of us will go where everyone else is. Very few people chat in an AOL chat room anymore, very few people use Yahoo! to play online games anymore and more and more people are moving their MySpace profiles over to Facebook — it just happens people!
@Joe,
I know someone mentioned BuddyPress and AOL — but I don’t think anyone mentioned the Buddy List of AOL specifically. When I was speaking of AOL as a social network, I was speaking about “America Online” back from 1993 to 2002 when the primary audience was using their software to access the internet and communicate with one another. Broadband killed that more than Yahoo! or MySpace did — but it was a social network. We had friends, profiles, chatting, photos, blogs, we had love connections, sharing information and everything else that most networks have today. AOL was the first place that many Americans first talked with and built relationships with other people online.
AOL did it all, just not very well and it ultimately was killed out but its inability to evolve (that and Steve Case has a tenancy to destroy good ideas). AOL had resumes, jobs, search … you could buy and sell things, you had auctions and much more — it was everything that all social networks are today; and many of them inspired by most of what came out of AOL over 10 years ago. It is sad but true.
Betamax is the future.
@akj, Interesting that you bring up Betamax, even if sarcastically — they are a great example of a superior technology that ultimately lost out and the rest of us lost out in the process.
It seems what is best for us, what the better platform might be, might not be the one that ultimately wins out; unfortunately.
Well, my comment was intended as a sarcastic jab, but (as you pointed out) my general meaning was that you can’t assume the superiority (or perceived superiority) of a product will be directly proportional to its popularity or longevity.