CNet reports an estimate of $1b being invested in virtual worlds. While comparing with social networks, it says
One of the reasons the genre still feels like a niche is that there is no single virtual world that everyone is using, like there is with social networks like MySpace or Facebook. World of Warcraft is huge, with more than 9 million paying subscribers, but that pales with what MySpace has.
That makes me think about the future of social networks. Social networks started as fairly standard “my profile page, friends page and scraps” model. A general product has the potential of attracting mass audience. Over time, they are getting more immersive (high engagement applications). Virtual worlds are often sharpely positioned, and serve a particular audience/taste well. As social networks becomes richer, focus on servicing specific audience/taste is likely to create relatively smaller communities. For example, with the open application support on facebook (yes, its hard to talk about social networks without talking about facebook!), will the sub-communities thus formed actually become far stronger than the underlying facebook brand? Facebook brand may continue to stand for the common infrastructure, but will users say “I am on iWatch” rather than “I am on facebook”? Especially if some of these applications try to migrate to being communities in their own right, rather than just individual applications? Does the student community now feel a need for their own social network, which facebook has grown out of?
Thoughts?
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A sort-of comparison: Does it make sense to have business centers if the businesses they host eventually grow and buy/rent their own real estate?
To me the answer seems to be: As long as the business growth is not hampered by the limitations of the business center, and the model continues to work (cost wise) for new companies fresh out of the block, and businesses do not get significant advantages from setting up their own offices, business centers will thrive. Their success is dependant on the number of new businesses they bring in.
Nnow consider a business center with the ability to take on a gazillion new customers, scale nearly endlessly and charge them ZERO in exchange for viewing an ad a day.
Facebook and Myspace are like the business centers. If they:
a) raise the cost of entry or
b) hamper the needs of large sub communities, or
c) if the sub-community leaders decide that heck, I could monetise this myself and earn money
Any combo of the above and we can see how there will be a subcommunity migration.
Eg. Some stock market groups on Orkut are considering setting up their own subcommunities because of the b) and c) above. I.e. lack of certain tools that would be of use to investors, and the ability to raise cash through subscription based models.Some others have diversified into free group sms sites to address those whose jobs deny them orkut access.
Finally of course, the cost of building a sub-community should be reasonably high to avoid migration. That will come down drastically, as hosted pre-created SNS and CMS sites gain momentum. And the only way one can avoid the greed of a large subcommunity owner to monetise is to actively find them and tell them you’ll give them a share of the revenue.
What’s interesting is the reasons for migration are discussed on the very site they intend to migrate from, but the site itself has no time to monitor or react to such a situation. How cool it would be if a Facebook employee would monitor signs of discontent on their largest subgroups and try and address specific feature requests.
Yes, it’s a possibility. When a subset community gets relatively sizeable, there could be a tendency to liberate itself from the platform, especially if it senses a drag. But just as a star that gains excessive mass, there will always be a higher probability of its breaking up (and form splinter groups) or collapse than sticking together. That said, I think a utilitarian, feature rich app will always `complement’ (not necessarily `outgrow’) the attractiveness of the platform. Theoretically you are not done till you convert all users of the platform into your App. But so are restless developers out there that are chipping away at newer and richer Apps. The emergence of one sticky App will fuel another, yet another and so on weaning away more and more people from the group. Hence IMO the App will always be a subset of the platform and the chances of reversal in this relationship are remote.
But the absence of “free flow” between Apps in one platform with other Apps in the same platform or those in another platform or between platforms inter se (owing to their lack of interoperability – since facebook, myspace, linkedin don’t let its users see face to face) restricts appeal. IM windows in MSN, Yahoo and Google are all good, but you have to be logged into G-talk to find your G-talk mate. You can’t see her if you are in, say, Yahoo IM. (I think Yahoo and MSN have started schmoozing a little now!)
Adoption of more open standards (as in email) will throw open several new vistas. A subset community of the App in one platform (say, FB) can engage with its closest next link in another (say, MySpace) that helps complete a circuit. Let’s say a community that is discussing the latest model of automobile in one App can discuss with another community of Auto financiers / dealers/ interested sellers and the circuit when complete, will end in a transaction that’s a win win for all.
From address book to a social network to a virtual world to a…… I can see seemingly endless looping possibilities if interoperability is accepted as the norm, which will be, someday. (The downside is there’s nowhere to hide, you are always under watch – even inside your house, thanks to digital maps and zoom in locators)
Agree with Bipin, about the apps being an important part of social networks. I also love the fact that facebook has opened up its api to the world. Tomorrow if I need to start a service of my own, (say rate my chaiwalla or whatever.) I dont have to build my own community, I can leverage off facebook. That to me is a very very big deal. Build a widget on facebook and start pushing people to use it (Rather than inviting people to come to your site…)
Interetingly this is what steve balmer had to say about social networking… Agree with some of that ya know. Social networks still seem to have flavour of the year factor, last year myspace, this year facebook.. any bets next year ?
Hey there,
Nice post as even I have been obsessing over this particular thought. Guess How I see it as Social networking and Virtual worlds are 2 similar thing but of an altogether different pie so it is to be dealt according to the pie it represents.
Virtual world can be termed as the next level thought and thus its always that Facebook gets branded and not iWatch. But certainly iWatch cannot stand of its own coz you need a community first and then its thoughts can be taken further to its next level.
Would explain it in the following thought.
1. A personal computer is called personal as it lets you have that personal feeling all to yourself and thats how porn registers highest audience (on the net) as it lets you have that personal feeling which suits its consumers.
Internet has its own identity in the minds of Users and anything in conjunction to that identity or image always suits and forms a part of consumers mind slot while accessing (product or service) that medium. So primarily its Internet’s image than the products experience and then the products demand is what determines a consumers approach to the medium.
For instance if Internet is working for the BSFI sector its only coz it has formed its mindslot among people who matters to the industry th corporates. Collecting leads or customer acquisitions as we can call it suits fine for the call centres to work on than any offline clients. Brand image would always struggle if they are forced always causing 2 way communication of the subject.
Eventually when these communities will evolve they will find their way to the virtual worlds like IInd life. So it all depends on how efficiently you can develop your community.
My opinion is that future social networks will be application driven. To give a very small example, facebook has a feature which let the user see updates in friends profiles. Its a simple enough concept, but it attracted me powerfully. A driving feature ( and a big timepass) of a social networking mindset is to pry, to see who is doing or saying what and how. Not to be left behind, recently orkut also introduced this feature.
Then lets talk of games and quizzes. I read recently in ET a company from Kolkata designed a Scrabble platform for facebook which has employees from BBC addicted. I myself found the flixster promoted movie apps , primarily quizzes and matches , quite attractive.
The future of SN, in my view, lies in these apps which provide a sense of structure and coherence to communication with other users. While yesterday I might have played scrabble on yahoo! games with a friend who happened to be online, today I might prefer to do the same in facebook. I predict that we will see more and more dedicated content driven applications like games etc either dying out or migrating to social networks.