On diminishing network effects in web 2.0, social media and human limitations

This post is a followup of a series I did last year on ‘The Human factor in social media’. Technology allows us to be “always on”. To be part of a never ending conversation. Simply plug in, anywhere, and you can join in. Friends are spread out across every timezone, so there always are people available to interact with. Technology becomes smaller so we can take our connection device with us, wherever we go. Connection technology provide us a network that spans the entire globe. Wifi, UMTS, HSDPA, WiMax, no matter where you are there is always a way to get on-line.

Everyone talks about the network effect in web 2.0 ((over-)simply stated: a service gets better as more people join). The network effect explains why the quality improves, it doesn’t explain why we all want to be a part of it. I feel there is an underlying need for interaction that drives current web development. Any respectable  web 2.0 service is based upon the premise that we all want to share anything with the rest of the world. We have life streams (what am I doing), news feeds (what am I reading), traveling plans (where am I going), shopping behavior (what am I buying), localization (where am I now), fan sites (who am I following). Even when you are not on-line, people that follow you are likely to know exactly what you are doing. Sharing alone isn’t good enough anymore. Now we need to discuss it as well. Everything is becoming social. You can share the things you discuss or discuss the things you share. Web companies have a field day catering our need to share and discuss what we are doing.

This ‘Social Media trend’, if you will, partially explains the phenomenal growth of social networks like MySpace, Facebook and even Twitter. The question is, where will this take us. I can’t predict the future, but I find it useful to think in extremes and see if it can help me get a better understanding of the present. I try to imagine what would happen if every Internet user (there are more than a Bln already) would be part of this process. What if everyone shared everything? What if we would all engage in a never ending conversation?

I imagine that a few things would happen:

1. Our world would become smaller instead of larger. As more people get online, and the data and conversations being shared becomes overwhelming, we will feel the urge to be part of less instead of more. Quality over quantity so to say. It is a natural phenomenon that can be observed right now. Just look at 2 examples of the way we now try to cope with the endless stream of information or conversation. a) Instead of searching ourselves we let others deal with that. In the tech world that would be the Robert Scoble or Louis Gray “like” filter. We ‘trust’ such people to find the pearls of wisdom for us, which takes some pressure off of ourselves. But if you think about it, this behavior is pretty ridiculous. b) We follow or get followed by countless numbers of people that we have never met, only to find out that the information or conversation that gets shared that way is often not as interesting as we thought. We end up listening and engaging with a much smaller fraction of the group of followers.
2. We end up spending our online time more consciously. Right now we spent hours at a time engaging in short bursts of interaction/discussion. It gives us pleasure, fun, a good time. But when does it really matter? When does it truly have an impact on your life? Change the way you think, feel or act? We may find inspiration, fun and profession on the web. But it simply can’t compete with real-life experiences (falling in love, getting married, birth, death, getting fired, getting hired, a fight, making up again, a beautiful sunset). The online engagements, as much fun as they are, are much more volatile than real life. It is the relationships you build up in the physical world that matter in the end. Family, friends, neighbours, co-workers.

It might be a bold statement but I believe that there is a limit to the quality effects of the network. While this effect can be used to explain why Google search improves as more people join I would be willing to challenge its value in interaction. The network effect improves data, the most important currency in web 2.0 if you listen carefully to the experts.

I would argue that the network effect diminishes in value when it comes to interaction. We simply can’t interact with the whole world. Our interactions would become meaningless, lose impact, and our impact would become infinitely small in a global conversation. Our human limitations force us to focus on value, on those things that really matter. In the end there is no need to interact with 6Bln people. The real impact lies in those few people we engage with that make a difference in our lives. The rest is just play.

Our need for interaction locks us up

MySpace has over 200 Mln registered users. Facebook follows fast with 140Mln registered users, and they are adding an astonishing 600.ooo new users every day. A rough estimate suggests that more than half a Billion people are registered in social networks worldwide. That is half of the entire Internet population. Clearly there is a need to be participating in social networks. The need is interaction.

While social networks undoubtedly have brought us many great things I find that the current setup is undesirable. Techies might consider Facebook and MySpace web 2.0, but their strategy is very much 1.0. They are silo’s. You are either in, or out. Or as Doc Searl puts it, Facebook is the Borg. Once in, it is hard to get out. You should realise that it isn’t Mark Zuckerberg or a talented developer providing you cool features that keeps you locked inside a social network. It is their choice of business model. MySpace and Facebook have only one mission, and that is to become the single silo everyone uses as their communication platform on the web. It allows them to execute their free, advertisement based business model. In this business model the network is more important than the user. In other words, the business model becomes more effective when the number of users increase. This is not to be mistaken from the network effect Tim O’Reilly often speaks about in referral to web 2.0 services. Web 2.0 services improve as more people join, in other words, the quality of the service improve as more people use it. In the case of the free advertisement based business model the revenue stream increases when more users are joining, but the overall value provided to the individual user is not 1-1 related to the number of users.

For that reason social networks make it super simple for you to add new friends. At the same time it is nearly impossible to leave the network, taking your data with you. And it is a service violation to export your Facebook contacts to another service. Getting in is easy, leaving is out of the question.

In order to keep the silo the most important platform, new services are added all the time. Facebook is not just a social network anymore, it is a platform of services. It provides users so much functionality that there seems to be no reason leaving it once you are in. A whole generation is now growing up thinking that Facebook is the Internet. And while Facebook and other social networks continue to add new services making this sound very reasonable I see a few reasons why this is undesirable:

1. There should not be a single company having so much power over our web experience. Especially if such a company leverages our (private) data in their business model. Diversification is good, building one platform and closing everyone into that platform sounds more like an old fashioned communist-like scheme to me
2. Privacy needs to be controlled by the user, it should never be controlled by the company that exploits all data and interactions of that very user
3. People are largely ignorant about possible dangers of the information they are sharing through social networks
4. The business model involved is mostly destructive as hardly any value is created. Facebook has a gazillion pageviews every day. While we are interacting with our friends, they display advertisement to us, thus trespassing through our relationships. The advertisement is largely ignored by all of us. No value creation there. And the sucker that ends up paying for this “value”? The advertiser, unaware of the bottomless hole he is throwing his money into.

Social networks are there for our desire to interact. But that interaction comes at a cost, we lose our privacy and diversity. While that might not sound like a big deal now I believe that in the end this will not be beneficial and even dangerous for us. The nearly unlimited growth of social networks will stop at some point. As we are all on MySpace or Facebook, it will become less valuable and cool to be part of it. Human nature simply doesn’t like captivity.

In a User Centric Web I get to control my data

I’m a big fan of the concept of a user centric web. That is, a web where things evolve around the user. In a user centric web there aren’t walled gardens. In a user centric web, the user is in charge. He controls his data, his interactions, his transactions. He owns his own set of contacts or friends and has them with him wherever he goes. In a user centric web service providers become just that, service providers. Not data hoggers, traffic drivers, walled gardens. They provide service to me when I desire such a service. The analogy I tend to use is that of a traveler reaching a gas station. I have a need for food, I want to fill the car up again and then move on to another place on my journey.

Google, Facebook and MySpace are fighting it out right now to “own” our data. Google just launched FriendConnect, Facebook delivers Facebook Connect, and MySpace calls it Data Availability. Michael Arrington wrote about this on TechCrunch earlier. He said:

Like Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google’s Friend Connect will be a way to securely send personal profile data, including friend lists, presence/status information, etc., to third party applications, say our sources. The primary benefit of these services is to allow users to maintain a single friends list and to coordinate social activities across different sites that perform different services. See my post on the Centralized Me for more of my thoughts on this.

The reason these companies are rushing to get products out the door is because whoever is a player in this space is likely to control user data over the long run. If users don’t have to put profile and friend information into multiple sites, they will gravitate towards one site that they identify with, and then allow other sites to access that data. The desire to own user identities over the long run is also causing the big Internet companies, in my opinion, to rush to become OpenID issuers (but not relying parties).

Michael is probably right about the motives of these three. It’s the web 2.0 trap we are all in. Who owns the data? Everyone wants to get a piece of it and they are all using the FREE business model to reach that point. but Free comes with a few problems I noted earlier. It leads to walled gardens, more focus on the network (or social graph) than on the user, forced advertisement and worst of all it leads to customer lock-in, instead of customer freedom.

I like Doc Searls take on this. He calls the developments to open up social networks using FriendConnect and the likes not really open. Instead a federation is created. A federation that lets the user travel around a bit, but he still doesn’t own anything. He isn’t in control of his own data. In other words, a federation isn’t a User Centric Web. Doc Searl points me to this excellent post by Joe Andrieu. Read his post, its really good. A quote that says it all from Joe is:

When we put the user at the center, and make them the point of integration, the entire system becomes simpler, more robust, more scalable, and more useful.

I believe this is what FactoryJoe is also working on. He wrote an excellent post on Data portabilty. He can get a bit technical for those that don’t like the inner workings of technology too much, but I have found it worthwile my time to dig into his writings. He takes the time to explain what data portability is and should be.

So if you ask me what is “data portability”, I’ll concede that it’s a symbol for starting a conversation about what’s wrong with the state of social networks. Beyond that, I think there’s a great danger that, as a result of framing the current opportunity around “data portability”, the story that will get picked up and retold will be the about copying data between social networks, rather than the more compelling, more future-facing, and frankly more likely situation of data streaming from trusted brokered sources to downstream authorized consumers. But, I guess “copying” and “moving” data is easier to grasp conceptually, and so that’s what I think a lot of people will think when they hear the phrase. In any case, it gets the conversation started, and from there, where it goes, is anyone’s guess.

He ends his post with the following remark:

I think the next evolution of the social web is going to be one where we take certain things, like identity, like portable contact lists, like better and more consistent permissioning systems as givens, and as a result, will lead to much more interesting, more compelling, and, perhaps even more lucrative, uses of the open social web.

I hope with Doc Searl and Factoryjoe that the next generation of the web (call it web 3.0 if you want) will be a User Centric Web. It will be both a business and a technical challenge to create it. We first need to get out of the web 2.0 FREE trap. If investors, entrepreneurs and developers are willing to think beyond the current web 2.0 boundaries then great things can happen. And if they do then services like Facebook and MySpace might just get into trouble in the end. I don’t want them to control my data. In a User Centric Web I get to control my data.

Update: Facebook just announced here that they are not going to allow Google’s FriendConnect on Facebook. The reason for this is that FriendConnect, according to Facebook, redistributes user data without the user knowing about it. Robert Scoble responds with Facebook having a point with respect to privacy. Both Robert and Facebook are arguing from the side of the service provider making the decisions though. That is exaclty why the user needs to be in control. The problem wouldn’t exist in the firs place. In a discussion on Friendfeed Robert says:

to me the Facebook privacy issue is giving its users control over where their data gets used. So, if I want to change my email address it changes everywhere on Facebook. If someone takes my email address off of Facebook into another system, like Google’s Friend Connect, unless they also respect those changes then I’ve lost control of my data. That, in Facebook’s view, is bad. – Robert Scoble

Again. If the user is in control of his own data, this is a non-issue. In a User Centric Web updating my own data and notifying my friends that I did could be done without the interference of these big social networks.

Social networking may be declining, social interaction won’t

I read a Business Week article this morning which suggests that the current MySpace generation is becoming fed up with the ad bombardments on the site. They seem to be spending less time on MySpace because of it. A quote from the article:

The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore. MySpace, the largest social network, has slipped from a peak of 72 million users in October to 68.9 million in December, ComScore says. The total number of people on such sites is still increasing at an 11.5% rate, but that’s down sharply from past growth rates. “What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising,” says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.

I don’t really know if we are now seeing a decline that marks a steady downfall of the current social networking sites. There seems to be contradicting numbers around. TechCrunch, for example, showed in January that Facebook is still growing in traffic, while MySpace is going down. According to Mashable traffic is increasing and they use a totally different measure, using the traffic measures from one of the largest content delivery networks Akamai. According to Akamai, they have delivered 5 times more data over their network to social networking sites in the last year. this suggests that people are spending more time on social networking sites.

And then there is the information Google provided for last quarters results. It suggests that Google has trouble monetizing ads on MySpace:

CFO George Reyes said social networking advertising is not monetizing as expected. When questioned further Sergey Brin, president of technology, said: “We don’t talk about individual partners or anything like that.” Brin noted some things were tried that didn’t pan out. While Brin won’t talk about partners it’s fairly obvious that MySpace is an issue. Google is obligated to pay at least $900 million in minimum revenue guarantees to MySpace through 2010. Later, the question was revisited again. He noted that Google also has Orkut and other social networking partners. “We have an incredible amount of this inventory,” said Brin. “I don’t think we have the killer best way to monetize social networks yet. We have had a lot of experiments (and some disappointments).”

So what does all of this mean? Well, for starters, monetising social networks through ads is hard. If Google, best in class,  is still struggling with this then you can imagine others will have similar problems. I believe that ads in itself provide little value to the users in social networks, and for that reason it is a faulty business model. Essentially the same thing happens on a web page as on TV. People will ignore ads when the ad itself does not provide the user any value in his actions. Ads work in search because you are looking for something, but do not work when you are interacting with a friend. The ad itself doesn’t provide extra value to the interaction. It is as if you and I are having a drink in a bar together, and the bartender keeps drawing our attention with commercial messages. It’s annoying, and most likely, we will simply go to the next bar to grab a beer without commercial interruptions.

SocialAds launched by Facebook have, and will, experience the same problems. Although the underlying mechanisms might be smarter (Facebook watches you and your friends like a Big Brother and uses your profiles and interactions to match ads) it essentially doesn’t solve the real problem. There is no room for advertisement when people interact. And their first Beacon attempt wasn’t a success either. Facebook got an overwhelming negative response mostly because people didn’t like it that the feature couldn’t be turned off or that it would invade privacy.  In my opinion, the beacon system is build upon a wrong assumption. it assumes that mimicking the “advice from a friend” on-line will help increase sales or better targeted advertisement. As I have said earlier, the interaction you and I might have when I tell you about a new car I bought isn’t the same as the beacon message in my newsfeed that says that “Alexander just bought car X on site Y”. In the first example there is trust, talk, emotions, gestures, the opportunity to agree or disagree with each other, in other words true interaction. In the second case there is a “computer system” that tells my friends I just bought a car. Not the same, and not enough value to help my friends to buy a car too.

I believe for this reason current most popular social networking sites will either evolve into something better, or disappear all together. I don’t know if the figures I started out with are a measure that show this decline in popularity, but I’m betting on something that is a constant factor throughout. Social behavior. People have jumped on the social networking train to be part of its success. But now that the hype is over, the question becomes if these sites provide the user real value.

Building and looking at other people’s profiles is fun at first but becomes tiresome pretty quickly. I see this all around me. People joining a network, spending a lot of time to build a personal profile. But after a while the fun wears off, and less time is spend on that activity. So what do these people use social networks for? Interaction of course. They use the chat functionality to chat with their friends, send them messages etc. the profiling and all the applications that help you beef up your profile aren’t interesting enough. And I’m betting that current social networking sites do not provide the user enough value to keep him on board while the advertisement pressure is increased. Maybe new initatives like Friendfeed will do a better job at it.

What are we left with then? Interaction. It is always about interaction. People love to interact. Social networking sites will have to evolve into social interaction sites where friends can use any tool needed to interact with each other. Through feeds, sms, tweets, IM, e-mail, voice calls, video messages, you name it. The web entrepreneur that can think of a web business model that monetises user interaction will be the winner. Providing value can always be monetised. Social networking may be declining, social interaction won’t!

Gaming will become the social network of the future

The other day I noticed that my kids and a few friends were all staring at a screen while 2 of them were handling XBOX consoles while playing a game. What caught my attention was that I realised that it was a very familiar scene. Kids always play games together, even though only one might actually be holding the controls.

We recently got our youngest (6) the Ninendo DS Monsterjam game (he loves Monsterjam).

We had to order it out of the US as I couldn’t find it here. the other kids knew about the present and were talking about it every day until it arrived. The Nintendo DS isn’t exactly a console for you and your friends, but what happened is that the youngest would sit on the couch and my other 3 kids would sit right beside him telling him what to do, taking over the console if it became too difficult for him, cheering when they unlocked yet another great Monsterjam truck. They are playing interactively all together, even though the Nintendo DS was meant to be a single user console.

Same thing happens on our computers. My older kids play all kinds of interactive games on-line. Not just because they like the games, but more importantly, because it allows them to interact with other kids. Kids from the neighbourhood, from school, or from another part of the world. I have a 10 yr old son that doesn’t speak one word of English yet, but he is in constant negotiation with other kids on this on-line game called runescape.com using the English language.

The success of the gaming industry is enormous. According to this article here, the gaming industry as outpaced movies and music in 2007. Almost $19 Bln in sales, incredible figures really. What is also interesting about it is that people are willing to spend enormous amounts of money on game consoles too (more than $9 Bln). That is interesting too me because it shows that people are willing to spend money on machinery before they even get to play the game itself. People pay for value they get or want.

So unlike the Internet where free but an ad based service is still the major business model. The main reason for choosing this business model is scale. If something is free people are more likely to use it. With scale come ad revenues (although you really need a lot of scale to become rich and famous, ever done the math on that?). Why talk about that in a post on gaming? Well, it allows me to jump to another place where interaction takes place, the social networks. In another survey done by comscore we see that the most popular widget in November 2007 was the MySpace widget. Other widgets like Slide, RockYou, Photobucket, Superpoke, all score high in this ranking. All of which are used in social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

I have written a lot about social networks and argued that current social networks aren’t really there to provide value to its users. Instead they are there to monetise the network. Now look at what people do on those networks. They use it mostly to interact! That is where the value is, it’s about interaction. According to comscore people in the age of 18-24 are far more likely to interact with Facebook applications than people of 25 and older. It is a different generation. Each new generation will grow up in a world where interaction, playing and gaming together is normal social behavior.

I always thought girls were interacting more through MSN, while boys tend to use on-line MMorg games as their interaction platforms. But there are a lot of social games aimed at girls too. My daughter is now playing horsetycoon on-line with her friends. They talk about it when they go to school, they interact with their friends, even while they aren’t on-line, and they agree to meet each other again, right after school is out.

Because of this trend we can see in human behavior, I believe that the future of social interaction will lie in gaming. The children of today are basing their entire on-line interaction on SMS, MSN and on-line gaming. It is the combination of play and social interaction what makes it such a powerful and addictive interaction environment. If I were a marketeer with a brain I would definitely start thinking about the interaction possibilities through gaming. There lies a world of opportunities waiting to be developed. I have said it before, a new social networking generation is rizing. Forget about social networks like MySpace and Facebook, gaming will become the social network of the future.

Google hits back hard with its OpenSocial plans but will the user benefit?

Well, there it is. TechCrunch reported it first (but everyone else has the same scoop!). Google is now revealing its social networking plans. Under the projectname OpenSocial, Google will launch a new set of APIs that application developers can use across social networks. This is definitely good news for the application developers. Instead of having to invest in yet another markup language or platform API they can do it all with one API. Very smart Google. It also matches a lot of the speculations I had on their strategy. As Mathew Ingram points out very nicely, Google has created the one ring that binds them all.

But let us not forget what that “one ring” was about. The real power of it lies in the hands of the creator, not in the hands of the one that wears the ring! Of course Facebook and MySpace have figured out that one for themselves, so they won’t be inclined any soon to join this Google blow to their kneecaps. I’m watching John Battelles take on this, as I always like his analysis.

It does take away a lot of the hype around the attempt of Facebook to launch SocialAds (here and a good analysis here). If Google can claim this central position (and they certainly have the capabilities for it) then Facebook’s attempts to leverage their closed network of approx. 50Mln profiles will be completely wiped away by the “We have access to approximately ALL Internet users worldwide” Google effort.

But what about the user. Will he benefit in the end? I have written a lot about flaws in web 2.0 and some of my wishes to correct them. It remains to be seen if he actually benefits. For example, I haven’t seen anything on privacy in the leaked Google plans. That will be an interesting one, especially if Google gets access to not only web pages and user profiles, but might also be able to leverage my interactions. A scary thought indeed, unless I get to control my own privacy. But the greatest threat to the user in my opinion is whether these Google plans will increase ad pressure on the web user. I am not a big fan of the advertisement model that currently is used as the mainstream web 2.0 business model. It inherently creates walled gardens, limits my options as a user and provides me with often unwanted confrontations with advertisers.

Having said all this I still think the world is better off with Google introducing these OpenSocial plans. It will scare the hell out of current successful but walled garden platforms like Facebook and MySpace. it will fuel an explosion of new and more open innovations. That is definitely beneficial to the user. But a warning is in place for Google. It only took a 3 ft small hobit and a lot of will power to end the domination of the ring that tried to rule them all!

Dear Yahoo, Microsoft, Google e-mail. Forget Facebook, start innovating!

I read an article this morning by the Wall Street Journal on social features in e-mail. In this article they state that e-mail providers are trying to gain back ground from social networking sites like Facebook  by adding social features to their e-mail platform.

I am a big fan of the concept of e-mail being at the heart of social networking. Why? Because e-mail has a lot of features that are important to me. It has a simple address book, easy interaction mechanisms, it is essentially a person’s directed tool (otherwise it is spam), and is used by a whole lot of people. Om Malik started a good discussion on e-mail being the ultimate social networking environment earlier. He states:

Given its critical role in our digital lives, I wonder if email could be the underpinning of a social environment — much less a social network and more a “relationship and interaction manager that aggregates various social web services” — that doesn’t require rewiring our brains and changing our behavior.

I think the concept of e-mail can be improved to become exactly that. It currently has flaws that need correction, spam being the most obvious one. But the WSJ article makes me wonder if the guys at Yahoo, Microsoft and other e-mail providers really understand social networking. Adding stuff to e-mail that existing social networks already have won’t be a competitive advantage (wow I can now create Yet Another Profile Page in my e-mail!!!)!

Why not focus on those things that they can do much better and get some real innovation going:

1.  Focus on interaction, not on user profiles. My profile is my interaction with others. I don’t care about pimped up profiles that do not match reality, I care about interacting with my family, friends, co-workers, interesting people I might not know. It is the interaction that defines me.
2. Create a spam free, streaming, multimedia sharing environment. Stop thinking in terms of me sending a message to you. That concept leads to overfull mail boxes and me feeling the pressure of having to answer them all. Think me sharing the things that are important to me with you. Think of a stream of thoughts, messages, content, emotions I want to share. As a receiver I might look at them, or choose to ignore them for now. Think of sharing on-line, so that my e-mail becomes a streaming messaging service. I don’t have to deal with loads of data in my inbox, the data is on-line available and more important sharable without too many storing and bandwidth constraints.
3. Think of ways that I can share the things I have just found somewhere. Control Copy, Control Paste a link or content into an e-mail message sucks from a user perspective. So how can we improve on that?
4. Think about the e-mail address book. It doesn’t handle multiple identities, e-mail addresses etc. It doesn’t have any presence capabilities. What if I want something to reach my friend who is not behind a terminal, but is available on his mobile?
5. Think about urgency. Everyone sends me e-mails using the red !, so that won’t do anymore as an urgent message concept. Urgency depends on the sender, the receiver, content, place, time, terminal etc. Broaden this concept and make it work for us.
6. Think about incorporating social search for subjects, messages, people, anything I need really. Think multimedia, think conversations, etc. Current search capabilities limit me to keywords. But how about interaction during my search.
7. Think about decentralization. Make the service USER centric, not PLATFORM centric. Integrate it in all the devices and tools I might want to use. Make it work for me, instead of me working to get it working.
8. Think OPEN, let me access the service anywhere, let me import and export anything I want to and from the service, let me have streams available on any platform, or incorporate any other service stream into this service.
9. Think about seamless integration of family, friends, contacts across existing platforms. It is such a pain for me to figure out how to add my friend on MySpace, G-mail,  MSN, Hotmail, Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook to my address book. And while doing that, think of ways I can easily decide where to land my message to a friend, or perhaps let my friend decide where he wants to receive it.

This list could easily be expanded if we were to sit down with a few creative people. So stop walking the paths every social network is walking, and start rebuilding the concept a-synchronous e-mail into something more fluid,  perhaps the ultimate social interaction tool!

The future of social networks lies in interaction (not perse in voice)

Tim O’Reilly writes a good analysis about the announcement of MySpace and Skype that these will integrate MySpace IM and Skype Voice capabilities. Tim predicts that Social Networks will turn into smart address books, that a social network operating system will require interoperability between many applications people connect through and that many niches will appear from all of this. Read his article to get the details.

I like this analysis. Why? Because I believe that social networking isn’t about the network. It should be about the interaction between people. So adding voice capabilities will help support this interaction. But honestly, I don’t think it will be the main driver for change. Earlier I wrote about my 10 wishes to change web 2.0 and move into an era of interaction.

I believe that the first thing that needs to be done is a change of attitude by the service creators. As long as they feel that their way to create value is to protect the value of the network that the users create, things will not change. It is what Tim calls the social operating system. Google has the best cards in hands to accomplish that, with Search, Orkut, Jaiku, the Gphone, rss feeds, the buildup of user base in Asia (where payed mobile services actually work). But a bit of competition here would be welcome. Facebook won’t last, as their monetizing method forces them to use walled gardens and increased ad pressure on its users. This may be a bold prediction, as some think they are worth $15Bln nowadays. But, as with many of such services, in the end, the user will move away because the value he gets from the network is much less than the value he puts into the network.

Voice will be a nice add on, but it won’t be the main driver for interaction. Looking at the behavior of users they spend most of their time using e-mail, SMS, IM. Voice comes way behind that.

So what will do the trick? I think it is our need to formulate questions and search for answers! The true value of having a network of friends around you is you can leverage that network while searching for your needs. Search can be looked at in many ways:

1. The “What is the capital of the United States” question , use Google or any other search engine to do that
2. The “What is a good place to go to on holiday” question. There are two convenient ways of answering that question. First, exploration thought all the different holiday sites. Second, referral from people you trust, a friend providing you with he advice of a possible destination or site to look at.
3.  The “Can anyone explain to me what Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation is about” question. Well, you could go to Wikipedia and read the information there, but a very good alternative is to see if anyone you know can explain it to you in words you can understand
4. The “What are you doing now”  question. This is always related to someone you know. Twitter like functionality or SMS will serve you right here.
5. The “I didn’t know I had that question”question. A surprise! Where did that come from? Not from search engines, more likely from a friend pointing something to your attention
6. The “I need an urgent answer now” question. Here a search engine might do the trick, but more likely an urgent call, SMS, or IM to a friend might work better.
7. The “I want to be entertained”question. Exploration, or simply sitting back and viewing what is happening to your friends or the world work best here. But honestly, t me, nothing will work better than to hang out in the physical world with people I like. No on-line experience can match that.

I could probably increase this list with more examples, but you catch my drift. There is a lot of discussion whether or not opening the social graphs of people will do the trick. Well, it will certainly help! The search for interaction is what will truly alter the way we think about social networks. Read my 10 wishes to improve web 2.0 and get a much better interaction if you want to know more about that.

10 ways to improve web 2.0 and move into an era of true interaction

I have expressed my opinions about the flaws in web 2.0 and how to correct them earlier and have gotten some very smart replies to that. I believe that in the end it is all about interaction between people. My interaction is my profile. It says more about me, about the things I find valuable, than anything I write in a profile (we all look better on Facebook than in real life right?). I also believe that current business models force service providers to put value into the network or application they build, instead of focusing on creating true user value.

In order to get out of the trap called web 2.0 we need to correct some flaws or perhaps (re-)invent some of the things to get to the point where interaction becomes the most important thing in any service. Having a need for a name for it I called it an Open Social Interaction Network, but I’m still open for anything better than that (let’s not call it web 3.0 please).

To deepen this discussion let me state my 10 personal wishes that in my opinion help us get out of web 2.0, where value seems to be put mostly into the network, into something that totally evolves around our interaction with others, thus providing value to YOU and ME:

1. I want to be able to export my friends and contact information to any other service I choose. Lets be real. The network does not OWN that data. It is mine. I have either taken the energy to find and add contacts to my friend list, have gotten it from them, or have typed them in myself. I want to be able to use that data anywhere I want. Why can I import all my data into a network, but they don’t provide me with an export function? Try it on Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Jaiku, Orkut. They are all willing to import my Outlook or Gmail contacts, but none provide me easy options to export my contacts from their service to another. Of course I am bound to privacy rules set by myself or my friends (if they don’t want me to export, I won’t)
2. Export my (multimedia) content to any other service I choose. Heck, if I want to burn a CD of all content I got or sent I can’t even do it. Twitter and Jaiki work with feeds, but Facebook doesn’t? Well, they are happy to import feeds, but I can’t export Facebook activity or content out of the network. Same goes for pictures, videos and any other content that I have kept, or that has been sent to me.
3. I have friends and contacts on many different networks. I want a lifestream service that allows me to see all of their activity regardless of the network and vice versa
4. In relation to point 3, I want to be able to message any of my contacts, without having to go to a specific network. In other words, if I know (or even don’t know) that my friend is on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and a few other networks I want to be able to send 1 message that is delivered smartly to my friend, without me having to think which service to use. Of course, if I want to, I can make that choice in a simple and intuitive way. And equally, my friend Joe can set his preferences the way he wants to receive incoming messages.
5. In relation to point 4. I want to have presence information available over all networks. That will help me interact more efficiently with my friends. So if I know that my friend Joe is on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Jaiku, Gmail, and I can see where he hangs out at the moment I might make an intelligent decision on how to contact him, or what I am sending over
6. I want to be able to write or publish content to multiple platforms in one action. So, if I write a blog entry on my blog I might also want to publish it on Facebook or MySpace, have a tinyurl published in Twitter and send a few friends an e-mail or SMS about it
7. In relation to point 6. If I get the same entry across multiple networks or platforms that’s hardly efficient. So some intelligence to make sure I get the message on the most convenient way would be nice (how about retracting all forms after I read one? So if I see a picture from a friend on Facebook, then I probably don’t need a twitter tinyurl or Flickr link anymore)
8. I want to be able to follow interesting topics regardless of where the conversation is taking place. I have a tracking facility on Google Reader, Twitter and many other platform. Let’s integrate them so that I can follow ALL conversation on that specific topic (if I really want to)
9. I want to be “on”as soon as I am connecting to the world. What do I mean by that? I want to integrate point 1-8 in my browsing experience. Not just widgets on a desktop, not just a unifying portal that I need to go to. No, when I connect to the world, it should be there with me, available when I call for it. It requires that I will be able to login automatically to any network I am part of. OpenID or anything that looks like it should be available as a standard. And personally, I would like to integrate it all into my browser so that I can explore and interact at the same time (DISCLAIMER HERE: I am involved in a (currently stealth) project that integrates cool interaction services into your web browser (more on that some other time) so I am positively biased to such solutions. Current integration on the web (take NetVibes or Facebook as examples) is not sufficient as they are essentially destination based making the destination more important than myself. And needless to say that if I am on the move I want to be connected using my mobile.
10. I want excellent and easy to use privacy controls to go with points 1-9, allowing me to set both general privacy measures as well as per item or message control.

So how about it? Am I on the right track here or do you feel its all nonsense? Do you have other wishes? Are there services that already do what I want (and I simply have missed it?). I’m interested to hear what it is you want out of next generation services.

Anyone care to implement some of this ?

Putting trust in your fans, a truly disruptive measure?

Just saw a nice article here about the release of the new album of Radiohead. Why am I writing about that? Well, because Radiohead has decided to dismiss of conventional distribution via the large record labels and instead let’s the fans download the music themselves. Not only that, but they also let the fan decide what he is willing to pay for the music!

An amazing example of a band which tries to treat its fans as fans and not as thieves. The record industry won’t like it a bit that a well known band is taking this major disruptive step.

What interests me is if this experiment will turn out to be a success or not. I think it is a bold step, but I also think that it will pay off. Sure, there will always be people downloading it without paying, but they do that now too (illegally). I think that the true fans will pay for the value and the trust they receive. And I also believe that downloading something for free isn’t nearly as much fun or provides you a feeling of belonging than getting the freedom to chose. Radiohead provides its fans with the trust but also the responsibility how to act. And psychologically that will be a very strong relationship builder!

I can’t wait to see what the response from the industry and other super bands will be. Have we just witnessed the first true disruptive step into remodeling this old-fashioned, walled garden industry? What do you think?

I’m off to ordering my copy right here

I also wonder what would happen if such a step could be taken in social networks? How about breaking the walled gardens there? Let the user decide which aspects of Facebook, MySpace, Friendster or any other service he wants to use, and let him link it up with any other network. Taking down such walls and put the responsibility in the hands of the user. The industry would have to make a move away from a destination based revenue model to a user centric revenue model. This would clearly be a revolution as all social networks are essentially funded by the traffic to their destination. And even though “open” networks such as Facebook provide all sorts of 3rd party development APIs, they still want you ON that network (that is what generates the cash), instead of the network coming to you when you need or want it to.

There are probably already some user centric service  concepts that do not depend on a destination (web portal). Do you have any examples in the market?

Ad supported mobile phones will never work!

Just saw an announcement that MySpace will launch an ad supported mobile phone here and here. Other initiatives are rising from Fox (Foxsport), Photobucket etc.

Forget about it. I personally don’t think it will work anytime soon. Why? Because the mobile phone has become a lifestyle object. It represents our personal individuality. It is used as a personal remote control to our lives. I doubt that there would be many people letting their private space be invaded by ads in that manner. Sure, there will be more ads when mobile Internet is introduced. But I’m not showing of my free MySpace mobile to my friends (loser!). And lets face it. Competition is so high now that the mobile phone rates are dropping fast. I don’t need or want the add scheme to get a free mobile.

Social networks and the language/cultural barrier

Matthijs van den Broek pointed me to a press release by Comscore about the usage of Social networks in Germany and France (German Social Networking Community Reaches 14.8Mln). MySpace seems to be a clear winner here, and Facebook only reaches a 4th place. There is a good post by Nicole Simon which provides doubts about the comscore figures as they do not seem to cross check with local measurement.

One thing that I noted in the comscore analysis was their explanation why MySpace did a good job. It was due to their local presence and ability to present local pages in the local language. It supports the theory that culture and language are strong factors to be dealt with in marketing and advertisement. To me it also supports my personal beliefs that in the end not the number of friends in a social network is important, but the quality of the interactions you get out of it. See my earlier posts on this topic (Internet doesn’t evolve around you). I am convinced that in the end a social network that supports my interactions with my true friends will be more valuable than one in which I get interaction with someone across the globe that I don’t really know. Discovering new people is fun, intensifying the relations with my best friends is even better. If you’re not convinced, look at the video of a Facebook and MySpace user that is getting a little fed up with all the unwanted interactions here! Lots more of them to be found at YouTube. Maybe, this factor will in the end make Social Networks that have a strong local presence more successful. What’s your opinion on this?

Matching advertisement on consumer profiles

Several posts about new advertisement initiatives today. Saw a post here discussing the announcement of MySpace that they will start using user profiles to customise the adds you get to see. And Google is now turning widgets into adsense, leveraging the media plan as the message as John Battelle says it. Looking at the discussions at Boing Boing here people seem to be skeptical about the MySpace move.

The main problem with user profiles being matched to advertisement is twofold:

1. Is the user profile representing the user in an accurate way. How many people do you know that fill out their profile with rubbish? Garbage in is garbage out.
2. Although the initial idea might sound good, I cannot help but wonder if “past” events predict “future” needs accurate enough. To clarify this, an example. Lets say I happen to be a sports fan according to my profile on MySpace. Based upon that I might get to see advertisements from Nike, Adidas etc. But if I have already bought running shoes last week, these adds really don’t match my current needs right? I was in the mood to select a vacation, but hey, that wasn’t in my profile. There is probably a trade off here between branding and advertisement.

Is there an advertisement model possible that might actually benefit the user, instead of the social network or the advertiser? User profile matching or widgets turning into adds might be a start. But there is a thin line there. If the matching is not done accurately according to the user, he will be annoyed. Amazon has used different techniques to the aid of the book searcher. I find The “people who bought this book also bought…”functionality useful and fun. But mainly because I am searching for a book, in other words it has purpose when I choose to buy a new book. If the purpose isn’t there, the functionality isn’t useful to me.

Maybe we should give the user control over the adds. He is already putting great effort in creating and updating his profile on every social network he is in. Why not provide him with options to decide what type of advertisements he is in the mood for now? Or make it searchable (I want to see advertisements on ’summer vacations” now)? Or suggest recommendations to him? Or allow him to get rid of advertisements all together (perhaps at a cost?). the network owner, e.g. MySpace wouldn’t like that. But, look at the upside. If a user willingly provide advertisers with directions, that would make them more valuable to the user and the advertiser right? In the end it should be about the value for the user, not the social network or advertiser. Any takes on this? What do you think about this, is there a way to make advertisements more interesting to the users?

Internet doesn’t evolve around you

Scott Karp writes about his experiences with the new Yahoo mash service. His article draws up all kinds of questions about social networks and their targeted audiences. The difficulty with all of these networks is that one size doesn’t fit all. There is always a tension between the size of the targeted users (is it a niche or not), and the advertisers you need for your business model to work. It seems that most social network attempts try to become a new myspace or facebook, targetting very large populations. But for precisely that reason it often doesn’t seem to fit very well when joining. But smaller communities struggle with their business models as well. In a Dutch article on fabchannels attempts to add comercial video adds to their service (you can watch music concerts there), a spokesman of fabchannel says “visitors haven’t complained about the video adds yet). Hmm, that doesn’t sound like the user is thrilled to watch these video adds either.

I think the selection of Time magazine, declaring YOU to be the most important person of 2006 is totally wrong. It is still the entrepreneur trying draw your attention to get you to his portal, or the advertiser pushing his message to you. But the internet doesn’t evolve around YOU (yet)! That is only a story they are trying to make us believe. What do you think, are there services out there that are all about you?