Facebook is rising, but social network users are fickle Rich Skrenta comments on the surging popularity of Facebook at the expense of LinkedIn and MySpace and asks Are network effects getting weaker? He has a great point about the fleeting success of early social networks.

A year ago, everyone was talking about MySpace. Now its star seems to be fading, perhaps as a consequence of its early success. My MySpace mailbox is full of come-ons from dating services and very little else. Meanwhile, a lot of my friends and business associates have joined Facebook in recent months and there's a surge or activity there driven by the service's expanding audience and new openness.

But who's to say that will last? As Skrenta notes, the cost of switching services is pretty low and people are inclined to run toward whichever network has shiniest new toy, at least for now. If Facebook doesn't continually out-innovate new competitors, its success could be short-lived.

Google has been remarkable in that respect, for the cost of switching search engines is zero. Yet Google got 65% of US searchs in May.

I'm currently a big fan of Facebook, but I'm not convinced it's the winner in professional social networks. It's way too early.

Labels: social_media, socialnetworks

  ¶ 7:52 AM