Let's go on and look at TV networks and web portals as examples of what will happen with social networking sites.
The social networking space is now in a similar place that TV was when the cable industry began to emerge. The three big networks in America dealt with very general, broad topics. Once the cable channels emerged, more topics of interest were made available which people that knew what they liked turned to.
Just like the big three networks, there will come a time when people will migrate to various outlets and communities to try them out; especially young people who are trying to find themselves at this stage of their lives.
Some Facebook fans will make this look like it's a statement about MySpace, why young people are moving to Facebook, and they will be wrong. The reason is because of the idea I already mentioned, that young people will do this until the time they settle into the specific, niche part of their lives. In other words, they start to turn from general interests to specific interests.
Even if Facebook grows a lot before they level off, and they will level off, they are still a pretty general site. When the next new things come, young people will migrate to there in droves, and on and on it will go. It's never going to change, no matter what changes happen in the physical world or the virtual world. The habit and behaviors of young people are first to congregate, and then to migrate. Again, this happens until they start to get settled into specific areas of interest in their lives.
Look at web portals as an another example. They are very general, and eventually will level off in growth. The reason this happens is because they are general in the first place. The only way anyone can get scale is to offer the type of content that appeals to the largest number of people. That type of content is general and not specific. It doesn't go deep into areas of interest, it only skims the surface.
Four-part series on "What the Migration to Facebook from MySpace Means"
What the Migration to Facebook from MySpace Means - Part 1
What the Migration to Facebook from MySpace Means - Part 2
» What the Migration to Facebook from MySpace Means - Part 4 from TheAlphaMarketer
What happens when general websites of any type reach scale.Think of this in terms of a large retail outlet of physical stores. Once they permeate a market, even it's an entire country, eventually there is no place to go. All... [Read More]
Tracked on: July 13, 2007 9:48 PM | Permalink to Trackback