Uno de Waal

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Social Networks are a fad, Social Networking is not

Uno as Web2.0

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Oct|3|2007

Reports are flying around on the reports of Steve Ballmer saying Facebook is a fad. I’m not disagreeing with him, in fact I think he’s right.

Robert Scoble has a reply to his statement that you can read here. At first I would probably be inclined to agree with Scoble. At face value (har har), I would also say that MS doesn’t get social networking. Their Sharepoint 2007 product is hopelessly lacking in Enterprise 2.0 value and it has crappy relationship management (it handles documents really well, but that’s about it). But the more I read the comments the more I felt that Microsoft were on to something, but Ballmer is still wrong.

One of the last comments (I didn’t read everything…) from Gene Chaung says:

The concept of Social networking is not a fad, but social network instances are.

Why?
usenet -> bbs -> email -> compuserv/prodigy forums ->
geocities -> friendster -> myspace -> facebook/linkedin ->
mash/ning/???

Because history, technological evolution and the inherent fickleness
of trendsetters tells me why. Balmer isn’t totally out of his gourd, he
may just be unintentionally right.

I couldn’t agree more with this statement and why I think Ballmer is wrong (or, unintentionally right) He meant Social Networking as a concept is a fad. That’s not true. Social Networks will still expand as long as there are communities. But different products might fall off the bandwagon.

Also, danah boyd has a interesting distinction:

She started by clarifying Social Networking vs. A Social Network.
Networking is meeting strangers whereas Network is about building
existing relationships. Nice distinction

Social Networking is eternal and has been happening since forever and we need it. A Social Network is two things: The difference in your Social Graph and your Social Network, as well as a platform/technology (such as Myspace/Facebook).

What I can see happening:
There will be two or three big players that will maintain your principle friends list, contact groups etc (Facebook, Myspace, Google, OpenID?).
Niche networks will flourish (Ning, KickApps, custom work?).
It’s not about the technology. You can have crap tech,but it’s about the community. But the tech is important (but being less so as social networks become commodities.)

Technorati Tags: social network, community, facebook, microsoft, scoble, steve ballmer, gene chaung

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