Is The Sky Falling on Facebook?

January 31, 2008

According to a report today in The Register, recent data from comScore suggests that Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks are getting, well, boring.

And it looks like this is not a seasonal trend.

My gut reaction is that the ‘cool kids’ — those early adopters — who now find the Big 3 social sites boring are off in search of the new flavor. Once that grows tiresome, they’ll move onto something else. Another network like Spock, perhaps.

All this has me wondering that if these social networks are free to use, and people don’t stick with them:

  1. How do you build a revenue model to continue development of the site (Should you for that matter)?
  2. If you are an advertiser and you want to play in the space,  how the heck do you make money?

I think that people will use social networks that offer some sort of tangible benefit to them. LinkedIn can help people do business. Niche social networks that revolve around very specific themes are fantastic for finding new ideas, hearing about new products, and for motivating you to try new things.

The only thing I’ve gotten out of Facebook is bitten by a werewolf, asked to take about umpteen movie quizzes, and oh yes, I have been contacted by a couple of ex-gfs.  What’s the value in that?

I’ll use LinkedIn, though, because I can communicate with people I want to associate with and maybe do a little business in the process.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun maybe once a month to log-on to Facebook and see what’s going on with my peeps. But I usually forget my login info because I have not logged into the site recently. I trust that I am not alone. Any site where users regularly forget their login and password because of lack of use is at risk of extinction.

Posted by seth | Filed Under social networks 

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