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Mark Pincus, founder of Tribe.net says:
I believe we are close to the point where people will start to be organized online into a ‘peopleweb’ where browsers will surf and search through people not pages.
This is an interesting concept. Companies like Social Grid have proposed the idea of decentralized social networking communities linked together by search engines however I think it’s going to be a long time before search engines will be able to display group affiliations and credibility ratings on the fly as Mark states.
Mark thinks that “big portals will all succumb to their audience’s desire for openness and transportability of online identities.” While the idea of an open web is appealing, in the context of the online dating space the reality of the situation becomes apparent if you replace “big portals” with “dating sites.” I cannot imagine that Match or Yahoo! or Sparks will open up their database to anyone who wants to access their members, whether it be paid-for data-feeds or advertising rates. Big dating sites currently feel they need to lock in their members, making it easy for them to leave for another service is not in their best interest.
I will continue to watch how the this evolves. Fascinating stuff!
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i believe that ultimately (in 18 months or less) networks which do not let users ‘own’ their own profiles and expose them where and how they want will lose their audience faster than you can say friendster. imagine if you could only email people wihthin the same host network?! anyone remember compuserve? anyone remember their email address? (i think mine was like 15555.2345@compuserve.com:)
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