Interesting. Only a few days ago I wrote about possible competitors to facebook, and now I find two posts on techcrunch that relate to my post plus the discussion I had with Mr. White.
Until today Pageflakes users could create pages for their own use, and/or make public pages called Pagecasts. The content was and continues to be completely up to the user. Now, however, each user also gets a profile page and can add other Pageflakes users as friends. Effectively, Pageflakes is now a social network, and users can connect based on common interests.
The second one is about the walled gardens of social networks and how this might be overcome, citing the new Plaxo Pulse as an example.
Plaxo Pulse ties together disparate services from across the web unlike the news feed, which ties together only Facebook’s content. While Plaxo hasn’t launched a platform to a crowded hall of over-eager developers, they have quietly focused on linking to existing applications on the web. Currently the provide a single interface for syncing with the social feeds, email, contact, and calendaring applications business people care about. It’s no long stretch to see this developing into even deeper integration with more web applications.
This relates to this comment of Mr. White (plus his subsequent comment) about introducing a protocol layer. Something similar is already on its way by initiatives such as the OpenID Directory.
Watch this and think about the stats. We are living indeed in an exponential age. It’s fascinating to think about it, once you see all these figures (that you will probably all have seen before on their own somewhere else) sink in. Everything increases exponentially at the moment, especially in the digital age.
But he offers another interesting thought: the new competitors are start pages, such as pageflakes and netvibes. I like that thought! I am a heavy user of netvibes. The configuration possibilities are endless and it is very conveniently to use.
If I could combine something like that with the social component of facebook: Voila, there would be a winner! So if netvibes offers a widget through which I can manage my facebook stuff, I would only have few occasions for visiting the actual facebook site.
On the other hand, if netvibes tries to implement their own social network it will be increasingly difficult for them to lure away users from other platforms, especially the longer they wait.
Admittingly, users can move away like swarm or a flock of birds.
But: the more contacts users have within a single platform, the less likely they are to move away. That’s the inherent stickiness of social networks.
The longer netvibes waits, the more difficult it will become to attract any users from facebook or others. (Especially since facebook and myspace are not just going to wait for doomsday, they will optimise their platforms at the same time.)
Summarising: could startpages be the new competitors? They could be, but for now I doubt it. Prove me wrong, especially you, netvibes (please).
The title gives it away, I know. But I do agree with Steve Rubel. Curiosity is a very important career skill these days. At least in our industry, where things are changing so fast, that typical approaches of a few years ago might no longer work – or at least not be the best approaches out there.
You don’t have to try everything or follow every single new Web2.0 gadget, website, or whatever. But you need an inherent interest in the movements happening out there.
Most people still underestimate the dangers of net transparency. As one can read in this article of the Guardian, some students of the University of Oxford were caught by proctors who found the relevant evidence on facebook.
Students now face fines of up to £100 after proctors collected evidence of students celebrating the end of exams by „trashing“ their friends, covering them with champagne, confetti, flour, and even foodstuffs including raw meat and octopus. […] „Somehow the proctors have accessed my photos on Facebook and cited them as evidence of my misconduct, and I am being summoned to a disciplinary hearing.“ „I don’t know how this happened, especially as my privacy settings were such that only my friends and students in my networks could view my photos“.
I keep telling everyone to be really careful with what they put on the web. Don’t put up pictures or videos of friends who didn’t agree – and also don’t put up pictures of your kids – they might not like that in 20 years time.
You never know, whether things like the abovementioned might be possible. Or for how long your content will stay in the Google archive. Or whether or not a site will end up in the archives of archive.org and possibly stay there forever. Web content is more permanent than most people realize.
Wo ich sonst so bin...