Nick O’Neill at the Social Times wrote an interesting post last week stating that social networking sites would be "dead" in two years. Meaning that individual sites will soon be a thing of the past and integration is coming.
(Picture Credit: BusinessWeek)
However, the integration of social networks will mean that each individual brand is set to lose revenue. Already we have seen that Facebook is blocking Google Friend Connect in an effort to protect user data. They’ve even created their own iteration called Facebook Connect. This move also proves that data portability remains a "nice to have" aspiration, not a "must have."
The question is whether or not the Web 2.0 industry of countless applications, widgets, and networking sites will want to make integrated sites and data portability a reality and whether or not it makes sense from a financial standpoint. FriendFeed is already an aggregator to connect multiple profile sites, and others have come into the mix (and gone) as well. But what about the idea of one site for all? Is it realistic, or even necessary?
(Picture Credit: New York Times)
Just like there is no one universal e-mail provider, I don’t believe that we’ll ever see one universal site that integrates all of the current social network sites into one. People want choices, and the sites that survive will be the ones with the highest value proposition for each audience that they cater to.
So, let’s enjoy the individuality and options that are offered to users. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Consider the different social groups and people you may connect with on Facebook vs. MySpace and LinkedIn vs. Twitter. Variety is the spice of life.
This is really interesting. Here are my 2 cents…
Communities exist beyond infrastructures (mine is already made up by people in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, many of the people having conversations in their own blogs, Yahoo Q&A).
As in real life, knowledge is what makes the community stick. I know who is in and who’s not, where they are and how to reach them, who they know and who they are friends with and what they are expert about. I don’t have to put them all in the same room for the community to exist and live. (this does not prevent to organize a nice gathering every so often)
So I strongly believe that community builders will approach community building thru information.
Let people select Facebook, LinkedIn or other platform when it make sense, blog in their or other favorite places, and rely on knowledge to engage and mobilize communities.
I don’t think it’s a case of integrating services, but rather that we develop our networks well beyond specific sites and options. So while the likes of Facebook will still exist (though I think it’s one of the weakest of the social networking site models), it will only be for a niche purpose. Effectively we’re slowly moving towards the point at which the internet as a whole is the social network, and individual sites nothing more than…I guess…the equivalent of specific chatrooms.