social networks

Is Twitter vs Plurk a repeat of Myspace vs Facebook?

June 25, 2008 By Dan Thornton

It’s easy to compare the current and growing rivalry between Twitter and Plurk to the rivalry experienced by Myspace and Facebook. And with Facebook recently becoming the biggest social network in the world, could Plurk pull the same trick with microblogging?

Well, for starters there are some slight differences in the two rivalries. Although Myspace became the biggest player in social networking, it didn’t have the first player status Twitter has – that honour belonged to the infamous and yet still running Friendster.

Twitter and Myspace do both fall foul of the fact that user customisation sometimes leads to profiles looking like a car crash, but as Twitter tweaking is more limited, it’s escaped the worst excesses. And while Plurk takes a more stylish route, perhaps in the spirit of Facebook, it’s far more overwhelming, with the horizontal timeline, Karma and cartoon icons.

But the biggest difference between Facebook, Myspace , and even Plurk at this stage from Twitter, is that Twitter is powered by mainly third party applications and integrations. It may be the reason the database is unreliable at the moment, but around 90% of queries come from external applications – not direct via the website. There’s just some of the many, many Twitter tools listed here. It isn’t like Facebook or Myspace, which uses applications as a way to add interaction and entertainment to the network. In this case, the applications can be the only entry to the network for many people.

And yet it’s this that makes me think Twitter will remain the leader in microblogging for a while yet, and is a way from peaking. There’s a limit to how many networks people will join, but Twitter apps can increasingly use the technology for their own devices, and can start to utilise Twitter within other websites. For instance, Chirrup uses Twitter to power blog and website comments.

Imagine more companies using Twitter to converse internally, now that more and more people have grown used to Instant Messaging and Facebook. And more public users of Twitter applications, and aggregators like FriendFeed.

I don’t want to overhype Twitter, despite my addiction (@badgergravling). There’s still a need for social networks, forums, Instant Messaging, email, telephones and even snail mail for different functions. I wouldn’t have started a blog about microblogging otherwise! But just as it’s now a rare event for me to use the postal service, and my email influx has waned, microblogging means IM and social networks are replaced by semi-instantaneous Twittering…

Internet usability demands centralisation

May 8, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Normally internet usability refers to the design and placement on a website to allow users to easily interact, but I firmly believe there’s an important new item which is hugely important in making any website, widget or service usable.

And that’s allowing centralisation.

Now I’ve moved to my own domain, I’m trying to update two years of links – on social networks, blog directories, wikis, forums, websites, other people’s blogrolls etc, etc, etc. And I’ve realised exactly how much work is involved in changing my url on all those sites. And that’s the same for all the major events in my life (such as the birth of my son recently), or even keeping minor details up-to-date and relevant (Do I still like the same music and films as I did when I filled out my Facebook profile, or the last time I updated Myspace?).

More and more people are online, and although the numbers of promiscuous profile creators are small compared to those who are happy with one site and profile, that’s changing. And it will change more and more as niche networks and groups form and grow – and advertisers etc see more value in targetting those niches.

It’s where ideas like Google Open Social work, with an API that works across numerous websites/networks. And although I don’t think it’s always suitable to limit every internet user to one ‘real’ linked ID, I do think it’s now essential that anyone collating information from internet users looks at the best way to allow that information to be updated from one central place. You might lose one or two clicks from someone being forced to update, if they see enough value – but the flipside is it’s too much hassle to update so people don’t bother coming back at all – ever.

And for something like a domain change, it can mean a website stops sending me any referrals, and drops even further off my radar.

That’s why something like Last.fm works, and why so many more users utilise its’ ‘scrobbling’ technology to track the music they listen to, rather than using it to find new music etc. If you’ve got a site which has a field to list music, don’t make me fill it out. Let me link to Last.fm, or Pandora. Or create somewhere that I can update once and feed out to all my various outlets. That’s one reason why Twitter works (I’m @badgergravling btw). A Twitter update can be done via a variety of desktop clients or other sources, and then end up on my blog, on FriendFeed etc, etc. Sites like FriendFeed are tackling the problem from the aggregation perspective, and allowing a huge range of inputs to be put into one place – but where’s a system for allowing me to make a huge range of outputs to all the relevant destinations without traipsing for hours around the net?

Myspace MP3 store is a huge threat – but not to Apple

April 16, 2008 By Dan Thornton

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether the new Myspace Music store will pose a threat to the Itunes and Ipod Applopoly. But I’m a little surprised by Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel being so ready to dismiss the threat to streaming music services.

The growth and success of Itunes, added to the image of Apple products and services, gives it a fairly secure position at the moment, and it would take something pretty revolutionary to overturn that. Certainly I’ve encountered enough people who have lost music collections from Ipods yet won’t switch to an alternative to realise Apple devotion works across all their products and services. And enough alternatives exist, even including supermarkets.

However, plenty of people already use Myspace to listen to individual tracks by their favourite artists, and offering a streaming radio service without limitations would make this option extremely attractive. And would seriously threaten several services.

I recently heard a stat regarding Last.fm which is pretty believable. Apparently just 25% of Last.fm users actually visit the website, with most using the ‘scrobbling’ tracking software, and possibly the downloadable radio player. It makes sense as the Last.fm site is hobbled by 30 second clips, and limits on the amount of times you can listen to individual tracks by specific artists. And although it does a reasonable job of finding similar artists, it won’t let you play the specific inspiration before sending you round the houses, which leaves the similar artists without any context. The arrival of Myspace could push Last.fm to concentrate on scrobbling and displaying widgets, which will either lead to new and interesting revenue streams, or could put a real chokehold on the traditional display advertising on the website.

Meanwhile Pandora.com is still on a U.S only lock down. And when you’ve taken something away from users, it puts you in a far worse position than when you’re launching for the first time. There’s no news on any re-opening to non-American markets, and in the meantime, along comes a site already extremely popular, and proposing free music streaming. Suddenly the non-U.S. world forgets Pandora exists. That’s going to limit expansion!

And then you have a myriad of small rival streaming services, like Meemix, which has a plethora of great add-ons and ideas around their music service – but has a corresponding amount of niggles and flaws, as if the ideas exceeded the ability to deliver in a simple and user friendly way.

Myspace can be far from user friendly – but enough people are already familiar with it and accept the problems to mean they’ll jumping all over new music options. And various research shows that the early adopters who jumped ship to Facebook etc are likely to still have a Myspace profile and pop in occasionally, so a fair few profiles could be fired up again to explore a new music option.

At the end of the day, it could be really good news for consumers, as Myspace plans to offer DRM free downloads (possibly pressuring others to follow suit), and it could prompt some serious thoughts about giving more value to users in the streaming market, and some serious attempts to differentiate and move ahead. It’s not often I praise and support Myspace, but for once their plans have my vote.

AOL buys Bebo for $850 million

March 13, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I don’t have time to start hypothesizing, but thought this was worth sharing asap. AOL has announced today it has entered into an agreement to buy Bebo for $850 million.

Bebo’s one of the biggest social networking sites in the UK, number 1 in Ireland and New Zealand, and is number 3 in the US. It’s also more focused on the early and pre-teen market, and has also been developing video channels/promotions, including Kate Modern (currently the most successful web TV show).

There’s more info on the purchase as BusinessWire.

My quick response is that I have an element of fear about a Myspace type stagnation due to a purchase, but coming a week after opening up AOL Instant Messenger, hopefully AOL has thought carefully about how to oversee Bebo without destroying what has made it successful. And it’ll be interesting to see what efforts they might make to change the monetisation of the site – something social networks have traditionally struggled with despite huge predictions of ever-increasing advertisement spending.

As long as I don’t get bombarded with cd’s to set me up on Bebo, I’ll be happy.