3 ms·
I would like to believe you. I really would. But it's hard to see how your parallel applies. Being the Mercedes or the Apple of Social Network would be great..
by nanairo 16y ago
I would like to believe you. I really would. But it's hard to see how your parallel applies.
Being the Mercedes or the Apple of Social Network would be great... but it would be a failure as a social network. The example you give of brand association could make sense for luxury items. Those items' value increases the less people have it (to an extent). But a social network's value needs a large group of users.
For your scenario to make sense we would need a form of open FB: then some people will go for the popular option and other will go for the elitist option, but they would all still be able to link to each other. Diaspora seems to be attempting something too big, so I doubt it will succeed.
We could break down Facebook to its basic constituents, and make those open. Some already exist: a messaging system (email) and IM system (Jabber). We would still need an open notification system (a la Twitter). Webpages are already open and a personal webpage could act as your profile just as well.
The last ingredient would be a way to define your circle of friends. Something like FOAF, but with stronger proponents/backing. Once that's all done, anyone could come up with their own Facebook: these would be a simple wrapper around what all these technologies.
- msy 16y agoIt depends on what your view of a social network is. My personal opinion is that people do not have a social network, they have a series of occasionally overlapping social networks. That all current systems are incapable of reflecting this is what causes so much friction and conflict. A social network's value doesn't come from lots of users, it comes from the right users. Fragmentation of the market away from monoliths towards many niches, with individuals have separate and distinct profiles on each would make them far more representative of the real world. It is possible a base-level platform will emerge to make it possible for this to happen but I don't think it will - the value for companies is in linking it all together, the value of such smaller networks for the users it that they do not link together.
- nanairo 16y agoSure, but the same way people have two email addresses, one for home and one work work, they could have two of these bundles. Say: I am a University student. They could give me instead of an email address, a userid to access my University page. This would be a webmail client, an IM client, a place to put my photos/CV/essays, _and_ they could be link to each other and to other similar services via FOAF or others. Then I move to work, and I get another bundle. And so on. The killer feature for me on FB is: it's all integrated so once I got someone on FB I get their email/IM/photos/etc... Plus it helps finding people by searching among the connections in your social network.