Some social network thoughts…..
I’ve been using Twitter more and more lately and i have to say that i’m really enjoying it. I love the simplicity and ease of use. The fact that they limit the characters, is only text and is just a list of your friends thoughts makes it always interesting. Of course, Facebook used to be like that for me too. I’m not sure if it will ever catch on for the masses. The fact that only a subsection of my friends use it makes it more useful for me so i don’t get too many updates. I’m not sure if it’s fun enough for everyone just yet. I do think the mobile aspect of it could tip it over the edge. I wasn’t that into Twitter until i started doing it on my iPhone and then it became a must-have app. I still don’t see much difference between the AIM away-message, the facebook status message and Twitter other than the mobile/cell-ness of Twitter and the simplicity. 
More and more i think facebook will develop into a utility instead of a place of expression. I think it will be like the yellow pages – where is a tool people use to look up people, find out about friends of friends and find phone numbers, emails, etc. It’s a social address and people directory. It’s a tool
MySpace continues to be about self-expression and i think that’s a good differentiator as they could never beat facebook at their game. However, i do believe self-expression can be done even better. Something like Uber or Virb or something could be better – if it had more of Tumblr-type experience int it. We did some focus groups the other day and everyone used both Facebook and MySpace. They liked Myspace b/c it really represented them – it was a good badge but they hated the sketchiness about it. “Too many old weird guys” they said. They had facebook b/c everyone had it and it was easy to connect but it didn’t seem like it was fun to them. It was interesting.
What are your thoughts
