Social networks can be like fashion they come and they go. How many social networks can one belong to?
We have seen Friends Reunited, BeBo, LinkedIn and many more come stutter and wane. Now it’s the turn of that one time leader of the pack MySpace to experience downturn. It no longer is in the prime slot which is now held by Facebook. It has announced it will cut staff by 30% to better compete.
So is cost cutting going to change the service, alter the consumer and market perception or is it just damage limitation?
They may appear more attractive to purchase now and get bought. They may reinvent themselves, or remain in downspin and become just another site with the hundreds of what2bes. Social sites come and go as fashion, people put enormous amounts of effort to climb there slipper poles and socialise but when crowds move they often leave empty spaces behind.
1 comment:
The social network services (Flickr another that has had ups and downs) are increasingly susceptible to the aggregators. My blog service (Typepad) is constantly upgrading so that one's posts can be automatically exported to Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed etc, so one rarely actually has to go to these sites to maintain a presence there. Also, secondary services aggregate what is on these sites for you, eg Thwirl which allows you to put all your Twitter, Friend Feed etc contacts onto one notifier widget. Again, this removes any need to actually go to the site itself. This is great for users as they don't have to repeatedly log on and access a range of sites or worry about transfer of their content if they find another one they prefer, etc (And sites like MySpace are so full of flashing adverts that I doubt anyone would want to go there if they could get the content another way, without the ads.)
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