Someone recently said that social networking is a fad. This is a phrase I hear often, usually from people who don’t understand what social networking is, and the possibilities it presents.
Socializing via the internet or otherwise, is an incredibly powerful aspect of humanity. On the net, it’s done more than anything else, including shopping. Think instant messaging and chat rooms. Don’t think about today’s social networking sites. The current tools and business models are inefficient blind leaps toward more efficient personal networking.
Friendster and Myspace are but initial versions of how we will network and communicate through the ‘net in the future. A few sites caught the wave and grew, which doesn’t mean they will remain relevant or morph into a business model that makes sense long-term.
Frienster slowly empties out, losing it’s stickieness as it continue to add features, none if which seem to strike as deep a chord as the initial rush of being two degrees from Bill Clinton or Pamela Anderson.
Myspace got lucky due to a fortunate bug in software that runs the site and early adoption by musicians. Record labels saw the writing on the wall when they recognized that instead of breaking a band for $1M they can do it on Myspace for $50,000.
Social Networking sites like Myspace are really replacement versions of previous concepts, which often lacked the vision, the rise in web services and most importantly, the post dot-com crash downtime that gave many innovators the time to huddle and figure out what’s next. It’s like MP3.com with blogs and more community-oriented features.
Ridiculous money is starting to flow from VC’s again. They say they are smarter, more willing to perform due diligence, however. given the stratospheric amount of eyeballs at myspace, it won’t be long before the well-funded me-too sites come along. Pay attention to them, they just might have that secrete sauce that turns the current social networking fad into a trend.
Go buy some Google stock, it’s a bargain today at $280.
[tags: myspace, social networking]
