Recently there is a buzz in the blogosphere about the drop in FB numbers. It looks like people got tired of constant stalking of their own friends or just moved on to other platforms. It may be just a seasonal fluctuation, but it also may be that the growing number of social networks websites crossed a point where people are not coping with managing so many instances of their social connections and are backing off. If that is the case, it looks like the next big service will be a system that will allow a single control panel for all the major social networking website. For example Eszter just blogged about FriendFeed which seems like a move in this direction. What do you think?
February 24, 2008 at 11:27 am |
http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/
As usual, no thoughts of my own, just a link. (I hope you know who Brad Fitzpatrick is :) )
February 24, 2008 at 11:56 am |
Hi Dmitri….
Good thoughts! and I agree with you on the “stalking” thing…I know I don’t need to know everything about my friends at all times. Keeping track of their thoughts and whereabouts isn’t integral to my life. And I wonder how integral it is to other people as well.
As I spend more time at the crux of journalism and marketing, I see things like FriendFeed being more helpful to marketers than to people. And when it comes to that, I’m not sure I want all those marketers and marketing groups knowing so much about me.
February 24, 2008 at 8:13 pm |
Thanks for the link, Leonichka!
And thank you for the comment, tish grier! Apparently the quite large numbers of users on FB suggest that people are interested in monitoring their friends’ lives, and this sentiment is naturally fueled by marketing and advertising industry. There is a lot of information about us out there…