MyWord or FacePress?

I read a very interesting post today and found myself in agreement with the author. Below is a quote but please do click through and read the whole article.

“What killed CB radio was that moment when its annoyance factor exceeded its utility — a utility already driven down by low traffic conviction rates and the eventual understanding that if everyone were a speeder then most cops wouldn’t stop anyone.

I am beginning to think that Internet social networking is another CB radio, destined to crash and burn.

Social networking has a lot of problems as both a business and a cultural phenomenon. To start with there is generally no true business model. This can vary a bit from application to application but most are vying simply for eyeballs and hoping for Google ads to pay the bills until Time Warner or News Corp make them an acquisition offer they can’t refuse. That might be okay for Facebook or MySpace and maybe Linked-In, but there are more than 350 general-purpose social networks out there and I will guarantee you that no more than 5 percent of those will be still operating two years from today.

If you are a social networking entrepreneur and your operation isn’t among the top 10, I’d be either looking frantically for an acquirer or turning your site into a social networking aggregator, linking to many others in exactly the way the chat networks appear to be merging while still retaining their individual identities.

Then there is the annoyance factor, which for me is rapidly accelerating as the major social networks try to establish themselves as hosts for third-party applications. This would appear to be a no-brainer tactic for the two or three social networks that are likely to survive. In fact I could argue that what is more likely to survive than most social networks are the truly compelling applications that run upon them, eventually subsuming their hosts. But in the meantime there is all this annoying crap. How many groups do you have to join, how many causes do you have to support, how many silly applications do you have to run until you come to realize that you are being included TO DEATH?

BuddyPress

In his March 4th, 2008 blog post, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress announced Automattic was backing “Buddypress,” that Andy has joined Automattic full-time and further stated:

It’s clear that the future is social. Connections are key. WordPress MU is a platform which has shown itself to be able to operate at Internet-scale and with BuddyPress we can make it friendlier. Someday, perhaps, the world will have a truly Free and Open Source alternative to the walled gardens and open-only-in-API platforms that currently dominate our social landscape.

References:
The Impending Demise of “General Admission” Social Networks

Social Networking Sites Growth Rates - A look at growth rates of social networking sites. The rules aren’t what you think here, so anything under 100 percent growth year over year is actually BAD.

Facebook Fatigue? - Yes, but the greater threat I’d say is annoyance caused by efforts to avoid fatigue. It’s a social networking Catch-22. “With so many eyes on Facebook, Zuckerberg and his investors are betting they can transform the social network into an advertising bonanza in much the same way as Google now rakes in billions through Internet search.”

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