Scott's Profile Pic

Scott's Profile Pic
Scott Swindells

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

What Will Follow Facebook?

I saw it happen to Friendster, Xanga, and MySpace. It guess it is inevitable that any social networking trend is destined to eventually supernova.
 
Facebook's incredible run might be coming to an end. Today's news about GM pulling its 10 Million dollar advertising campaign from Facebook because "it wasn't working," closely follows yesterday's reports that Facebook users are saying in overwhelming numbers that they don't trust the site on privacy issues. Couple all of this with Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin renouncing his U.S. citizenship just before Facebook goes public on May 18 and we seem to have a perfect storm that spells trouble for the social networking giant.

A lot of people are speculating about what will come next. I've heard people talk about Twitter, Google Wave, and even Four Square or Pinterest as the "next Facebook," but each of those, like Linked In (professional networking), Groupon (social commerce), Delicious (social bookmarking), and Flickr (photo sharing), serves a specialized need that is different from Facebook.

I don't think Facebook will disappear the way some are imagining it will. I imagine the next big thing is going to be more along the lines of an app like HootSuite (or countless others) that streamlines many networking sites together most seamlessly, so users can post their thoughts, network professionally and socially, share pictures and news, tweet links, post status updates, cash in on group discounts, pass along memes and humorous videos, bookmark and tag web pages, and much more, using the sites they already prefer (or later discover) to their network.

But which network? If it is an app that wins out, the app would have to somehow be the main network, connected to all the people in each of the networks to which a user already belongs. Right now, most people have built their largest networks on Facebook, and wouldn't want to have to recreate all that connecting. And Facebook already does pretty much everything that the hypothetical app I described would do. If Facebook can rehabilitate it's public image and continue to adapt, the next Facebook will be Facebook.

What do you think?

Will another social network replace Facebook? Is it one that currently exists? Could it be an app that syncs everything together instead? Will Facebook prevail?


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