Google’s deploying their now well-known tactic for dealing with threats; assemble a gaggle of doctorates into a room while simultaneously cutting cheques left right and centre. Meanwhile Facebook just rolls out another game…weddingville anyone?
But here’s the issue I see, backed up by three years of research: It’s about the address book. Not games. Not features. It’s my address book with all my connections…added to that is all that really valuable stuff of social networks – videos, messages, photo’s. The stuff that makes up human experiences of social groups. Our “social history” if you will.
Sure, Google’s got lots of people with Gmail accounts. But Google Buzz has failed. Mostly because it completely misses our “social history”…it’s just not easy to share what is easy to share in Facebook – photo’s, videos and the comments added to photo’s that we may go back and look at. Buzz just bombs there. It’s essentially just a hyped up version of Gmail.
In our view, if Google really wants to take on Facebook, they have to figure out how to compellingly make it easy to port over not only ones address book connections, but all those photo’s and the history attached to them.
But perhaps they aren’t bothering with that at all? Perhaps they’re just going to offer a bunch of games to play. That’ll be about as successful as Wave and Buzz.
Google isn’t batting a good average right now. I’m curious to see what they come up with in this latest venture. Somehow I suspect it may not be a social networking app. It’s too bad, since I like what Google does much better than Facebook.
Facebook’s continual attempt to “open” up people’s information is, I think, I gross miscalculation on the meaning of a persons “social network.” It’s not really about privacy of the individual it’s about privacy of our network of friends and family.
I am on Facebook and I like it. I will not however, connect as a “friend” with someone I have never and likely never will, actually meet. I ignore these requests, for business I use LinkedIn or I may connect via my Twitter. To get to know you better first. The mayor of my city made a “friend request” and while I’m sure he’s a very nice guy, I just don’t know him. I’m not a friend. Maybe someday I will be. Then I’ll include him.
The point is, Facebook is about a persons “network”, or who they work with, family and well, actual friends with whom there is a social or emotional connection. That connection may have started 25 years ago in high school or a year ago at a function and well, you just connected.
We already know that we can not possibly be friends with everyone. Nor do people want to be. This is where Facebook has entirely missed the point of social networks in the sense of “social networks” and in fact, I will submit, that by trying to expand, falsely, a persons “social network” beyond people they really want to connect with, they are significantly diluting the value of their data to marketers. Since there is no longer a “true” representation of a persons network. It ruins the “data set” and dilutes it.
Facebook adds significantly more value by looking at “network effects” of people and will be able to draw much better conclusions and provide much better resale information (in aggregate) to buyers and advertisers than opening things up too much.
Keeping privacy rights at the forefront is actually in Facebook’s better financial interest. The more they try to open things, the worse they actually make their offering.
Manging privacy better is in fact, in Facebooks broader financial interest in my opinion.
What do you think?
(Author: G. Crouch, CEO)
No, I doubt it. That’s the short answer. Yes, nearly a million people have “quit” Facenook recently with the new privacy rules and the advent of the “I like it” button being added to the service. But they have over 400 million active users worldwide. Losing a few million, and likely they will, is just not enough to worry about at that size. A few hundred thousand is a blip on the “churn rate” for a month. That’s it. If that even.
One group of aspiring entrepreneurs has raised over $100K to build a more “private” alternative to Facebook and will likely see some business if they can execute. Diaspora says they’ll launch in late summer or early fall. This is the democracy of the Web at work – if you don’t like something, there’s a way to build the alternative.
If reports start to come out that 10, then 20, then 50 million are leaving, I suspect they’ll start to be concerned. But the fact is, we’ve heard these privacy and usage fear stories before. As the Internet began to see popularity in the mid-90’s and the .com bubble started to expand bigger than a Hubba Bubba bubble gum bubble, news stories ran constantly about all kinds of dangers; fraud, luring, lurking. We warned against so many different societal threats. Today, we’ve all learned to delete those emails from some poor sod in Upper Rubber Boot Africa who needs to get to their dead uncle’s millions and only you can help…well, hopefully you’ve figured that out.
Here we are, 15 or so years later. The Web keeps growing and more people keep signing on. This I think, says at a broader social level – people want to connect, create and communicate. Despite the dangers.
Chat rooms, IM services, newsgroups, forums…those early “Web 2.0″ tools, still exist and are as popular as ever. Privacy commissioners may write letters of concern to Facebook…but people still log on. Daily. By the many millions.
If governments step in in a larger way, Facebook may be forced to make changes. But at the end of the day, Facebook has also enabled people to clamp down their profiles. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. Like many things in life, we sometimes have to take responsibility for our own actions and work at things.
Just like the Web is not going away, quite the opposite, so Facebook isn’t going away. Services like Diaspora will come into being, people will learn to better manage their privacy. These are new social rules we’re writing as a society. In the meantime, Facebook is not about to collapse.
Here’s a great 2 min video by Huffington Post on managing your privacy settings.
(Author: G. Crouch, MD)
Research, Thunking•
on March 10th, 2010•
There’s two clear trends we’re seeing with regard to Social Networks (i.e. Facebook, Bebo, Ning etc.) in our research;
1) Specialization: There’s a growing number of specialized Social Networks for people’s hobbies, cultures or activities. Such as sailing, Indians, African Americans and more, we call these SSN’s (Specialized Social Networks). Then there’s services like Ning that enable social groups to connect and organize.
2) Consolidation: People are getting over the mad rush and excitement of new stuff and staying put, including consolidating where they are and what services they are using. If they’re on Facebook, they’re staying.
In terms of global Social Networking services, Facebook has won, as LinkedIn won for business networking. MySpace, Bebo, NetLog and others can try all they want, but pulling in people from existing services is going to be a tough job. Why?
It’s Not Contacts It’s Relationships & History
Sure, Buzz already enabled your Gmail contacts to easily migrate into Buzz (a problem with privacy in and of itself) and Facebook and the others offer the same service. But it’s not about your contacts. It’s about your content history (the photo’s and videos you’ve shared, commented on, laughed and cried over, the notes you’ve made and shared and more.) This is the real value inherent in a Social Networking service.
While it may be easy to import contacts, it’s much harder to convince all your friends and connections to move to a new service. Because they too have a history on that service. And they don’t just connect with you. They too have their own family and friends they’ve established relationships with.
For new services that want to compete directly with Facebook, this is their biggest challenge. And relationships and that history are not transferable. It’s just not technically possible.
Specialized Networks Have Opportunity
This doesn’t mean there isn’t still opportunity. We see a trend toward specialized Social Networking services, such as AllSailors or ConnectedSailors or singles dating for sailors like LoveSail in the UK. Then there’s Ning where you can set up your own Social Network for whatever hobby, sports group, community group you want. Easily and quickly. These specialized Social Network services are growing and what we’re seeing is that people are keeping their Facebook, NetLog etc., services and then engaging with specialty Social Network related to their hobby. We have seen as well, that people who are passionate about a particular topic, cease engagement with general services like Facebook; this will represent a monetization challenge to these services.
Age Related Context
Tied into this is that the under 20 demographic is most active in broad social networks, it’s the 20+ crowd who are establishing hobbies and extra interests that are migrating more to Specialized Social Networks (SSN’s), especially the 35+ demographic, men and women alike.
(Author: G. Crouch)
Best Practices, Research•
on January 28th, 2010•
A trend we’re noticing in Social Networking services (i.e. Facebook or Bebo) and how people are behaving is a move to more specifically focused social networks. Perhaps the first to start this was Ning a few years ago, and Ning has steadily increased. We’ve seen the addition of services like Ning, such as Qlubb, Flux, Grouply and well, here’s a list.
When you compare this to real-world social behaviour, it’s not at all surprising. We all have our hobbies and activities; sports, travel, photography, community service. A number of social technology companies have seen this, it’s nothing new from an availability standpoint.
What is new as a trend we’re seeing is that these services are expanding. It’s changing how broad social networks like Facebook, are being used. We call social networking services like Facebook “Open Loop Social Networks” – meaning they are more open. You can form groups in Facebook, with group and fan pages. There are millions of them, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the activist.
In our analysis of these communities and social group behaviours online though, we’ve seen a 42% increase in use of “Closed Loop Social Networks” over the past 6 months from a sample size of 54,000 profiles. Facebook will always see such group and fan pages being built; but we note that 96% of Facebook groups that are formed are active for only 3 weeks on average. Highly active group pages in places like Facebook tend to be those that are more focused; such as kayakers or mountain bikers.
Specialty group social networking service like Grouply or Ning however, are much more active since the participants are all like-minded. For those looking to market to those groups, look beyond just Facebook and look at other Closed Loop Networks to truly reach your target.
Media Analysis•
on September 23rd, 2008•
Recently, Facebook changed it’s UI design. So did Twitter and FriendFeed. These are 3 of the top Social Media tools. All have developed an ecosystem around them, and none more so than Facebook. This shows a serious fragility in the Social Media Ecosystem – that one popular platform can have profound economic impact on the many businesses building off the primary in that ecosystem.
Just like auto makers that have begun to shut down and re-tool plants from trucks to smaller cars, there is a profound residual impact on suppliers to those big auto makers. A good article in All Facebook (an unofficial blog about all things Facebook) shows the surface of the impact of a UI design change in a popular Social Network. Apparently there are mixed reviews where some application developers and advertising engines have seen an increase in traffic/impressions while others have seen significant decreases.
Regardless of the nuances of the changes and traffic impacts, what is clear is that the Social Media economics remain fragile and reflective of any emergent industry. A similar set of occurences happened when Google first started changing its search algorithms and Page Rank rules.
While we have little doubt that Social Media and the Social Web will continue to see significant growth, a key challenge ahead will be how the economics will work. Just like the real-world, a major “manufacturer” can have a profound impact on the attendant companies building services and products off the back-end.
Unlike the real-world however, changes in Social Media services can be extensive and destroy business models overnight, while creating whole new ones. This creates some serious concerns over business model sustainability when it comes to adjunct services and products relying on a key player. The overall impact is still less than when an auto maker closes a factory putting thousands out of work, but there is still an economic impact.
Those providing consulting and advice on leveraging Social Media services will have a challenge to constantly understand and adapt to the quickly evolving economics of the Social Media ecosystem. Stability is unlikely to occur in the short term and we anticipate increased volatility as some services collapse in the coming months with monetization pressures. This issue also shows the power of a popular Web service. With Facebook making such arbitrary changes with little warning and forced compliance like Google, how these issues can be better managed will also be interesting. But that’s another blog entry.
