Social Streams
Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook, wrote a thoughtful piece about the future of social networks in a world dominated by Twitter and Facebook. He has a unique outlook on the future of social networks and the various forms they take. Presently, the dominant form is the stream. Facebook pioneered it with their News Feed and Twitter capitalized on its simplistic presentation and ease of use. There’s no doubt that Facebook and Twitter are the 800 pound gorillas in the room, but I think there’s more space to innovate than Cook acknowledges. In his article, he comes to the following conclusion:
There are at least two ways forward for social media in a stream world – even in a stream world dominated today by Facebook and Twitter. You can dedicate yourself to creating applications that play well in the stream, or you can try to come up with a new way to shape the stream itself.
I agree that one way forward is focusing on applications that “play well in the stream.” Zynga is the quintessential example of a company focused on creating applications that successfully leverage the social stream. Others like Playfish and Playdom have also followed suit.
However, I disagree with Cook’s claim that you need to find a new way to shape the stream itself. The stream is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere over the course of the immediate future. It’s by no means a permanent fixture in the world of social networks, but it’s proven to be a successful model for delivering and consuming information. Revolutionizing or reshaping the stream in its entirety is a lofty goal, and I don’t think it’s necessary right now. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
There’s plenty of room for innovation when it comes to the stream. Facebook is compromised by the fact that the stream is really a flood. There’s too much information from too many people on the fringe of my social graph. I just don’t care about 80% of the information I see in my News Feed. It’s overwhelming and irrelevant a majority of the time. That’s not to say that everyone feels this way. 175 million people log into Facebook everyday. That’s a huge number or people who derive utility from their News Feed or other stream applications on a daily basis. However, Facebook’s stream is primarily focused on providing updates in the form of text and photos for your immediate social graph. They’ve left plenty of wide open spaces to play around and innovate.
Twitter’s stream is much different. They’ve proven that a model focused on brevity (140 characters) and an open following system (versus Facebook’s mandatory reciprocated following system) can scale. With Twitter, I can better control the information in my stream by selectively following content providers I find interesting. This helps to provide a much more useful and personally relevant source of data.
Twitter is just one successful iteration of the stream. Tumblr is doing something unique in the space as well by leveraging the open follow system while creating a platform focused on the curation of mixed media. (Disclaimer: I work for Tumblr.) It allows for a different type of interactive experience, more engaging on an emotional, aesthetic, sensory, and personal level. The Tumblr stream, or Dashboard, has become a place for people to socially curate and consume the things they love.
There are plenty of other ways to leverage the stream. Hot Potato is successfully providing a platform for creating social streams around live events. Foursqare is focusing on personal activities. Plancast is trying to do the same thing for future plans. There’s a rapidly growing segment of emerging startups focused on taking streams and using them to leverage different verticals. There’s also a handful working on rearranging the presentation, functionality, and applications used to interact in a stream. The immediate future and growth of the social stream is not about revolutionizing its functionality or interface, but on leveraging niches that provide value to an engaged user base. As Facebook surpasses 400 million users, it grows increasingly difficult to target and leverage verticals within its ecosystem. People will gradually move towards streams they find personally appealing and consist of peers who share a common interest (Facebook recognizes this and has brilliantly fostered Facebook Connect as a mechanism to stay relevant and connected). What’s really interesting is thinking about the unique economies, diverse monetization opportunities, and interactive mechanisms for these streams, but I’ll save that for another post. It’s an exciting time for the emergence of social platforms, especially those focused on providing unique and relevant utility.
Read Books, They’re Good For You
It takes me a while to finish a book nowadays. With so much information coming from all directions, it’s hard to stay focused on one source. Everyday I scroll through Tumblr, then I filter through Twitter and Google Reader and queue up my news for the morning. I do all of this on my laptop and phone. On top of that, I subscribe to a handful of magazines which I read religiously. Altogether, this ends up being a ton of material I selectively consume.
There’s a lot of short-form content being created that’s packed with important details. It’s succinct, informative, and easily accessible. This style of news and entertainment consumption isn’t just a trend, it’s becoming reality for anyone with internet. From a macro-perspective, this is a good thing. Information flows quickly and freely and the readers win. However, this glut of online information is compromising the role books play in our lives.
Recently I started reading John Battelle’s The Search. I was initially apprehensive to pick it up, not because I didn’t have time for it or wanted to read fiction, but because it was written in 2005. How relevant could a book on internet search written almost five years possibly be today? (The answer in this case is very relevant. The Search is a fantastic read about the anthropological effects of internet technology, particularly Google.) I’ve been trained to value things that are “current” or “real-time” more than influential works from the past.
In today’s world of instant gratification, people have a growing tendency to overlook the value of books. Blogs and online news sources cannot replace the depth and wealth of knowledge books provide. That’s not to say one is inherently more valuable than the other - in a sense, they’re complementary goods - one providing a platform of rudimentary theory and knowledge and the other constantly pushing new trends and schools of thought. As we enter an age where online media is becoming our primary source of information, we should never overlook or take for granted the benefits and impact that books have on our lives. They will always be equally important.
Online business model innovation can’t slow down
Chris Dixon wrote a piece today asking if online business model innovation is slowing down. In relation to social media, my take on the matter is quite simple: it cannot slow down. This is true for multiple reasons. Mainly, I think that “where people spend time, money will follow.” If enough people are using the same resource to solve their problems, consume information, or entertain themselves, there is a way to monetize. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s going to be Google-type monetization of $22B a year.
Social media business models will probably have great difficulty capitalizing on purchasing intent (where Google sees it’s highest margins). What social media provides (Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter) is an outlet for interaction, information, and expression - or consumption intent. Opposed to other online mediums, end users consume information from their peers and sources they selectively follow, not a source generated by an algorithm.
The benefit of the social media model is that we receive information from people we trust. We read the articles referred to us by people we admire. We buy the things that received glowing reviews from our peers. We interact with people with the same interests. And we constantly share with the desire to inform, impress, educate, and engage. So while social media may never be able to create an AdSense equivalent, it has the advantage of user engagement - people want an answer, but the ride is just as valuable as the destination.
Social media can employ countless monetizable features - some more efficient and with higher margins than others. The fact of the matter remains that there is no single best practice for monetizing social media right now, and that’s a very good thing. It leaves the door open to new business models and innovation around revenue streams. It’s an exciting time to be in this space, and even if there is no AdSense for social media, there will be a new paradigm for business on the internet - and that is equally exciting.
