[Note: this is an article I wrote that, while not about b-school, should be of interest to many MBA students as it discusses the future of an emerging industry.]
The Simplest Form
Friendster, of course, was the first social network as the form exists today. Consisting mostly of user profiles and friends, Friendster is largely a way to keep track of real world connections. Then came MySpace, which provides two big differentiators: 1) more freedom with the profile page (it is intended to be . . . your space) and 2) you are encouraged to connect to people regardless of any real world connection. I might be friends with Barak Obama, whether I actually know him or not.
Facebook evolves: the news feed
At first glance and at first launch Facebook seemed to be far closer to the Friendster model - you have user profiles and you can link your profiles to those of your friends. But then they added one ostensibly simple feature that changed everything: the news feed. When you log into Facebook, the first thing you see is the aggregate news feed (sort of like an RSS feed) from all the recent Facebook activity of your friends (depending on the privacy settings they have in place). It’s this feature that makes Facebook applications so incredibly powerful in their viral potential on Facebook (of course, the fact that there even ARE Facebook applications is also key. For more on that, please read this very insightful Marc Andreessen article: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/analyzing_the_f.html).
There are two types of viral advantages created by the news feed:
1) The growth/spread of applications themselves. As an example, if I add the “places I’ve been” maps application, all my friends see that on their news feeds and then know that that application exists and may be worth adding.
2) The viral growth of the specific tasks preformed by the application. The best example here is the “del.icio.us” application. Much like its at-large net application, del.icio.us is a way for you to share web pages. So if you have the del.icio.us application on Facebook and links set up in your browser, as you’re reading a cool article on nytimes.com, just link the article to del.icio.us and your friends’ news feeds will read “Mark added ‘Dewey Beats Truman’ to del.icio.us.” and my friends all know that the news article “Dewey Beats Truman” exists and the article, as well as nytimes.com itself, will spread through Facebook users.
And there are two incredibly powerful things worth noting about the news feed/friend relationship:
1) Because most relationships in Facebook (for the time being) tend to be based on real world friendships and not some dude you met on MySpace because he likes the same band, actions taken that are represented in the news feed come from a trusted source. I’m as likely to add that application I read about in a news feed as I am if a friend had told me in conversation “hey, you should check this out.” That’s some powerful marketing ability – you’re not leveraging connections, you’re leveraging friendships. When in the history of marketing has anyone ever been able to tap into that en masse?
2) The news feed is a light push. I’m a big sharer. I love telling all my friends about this cool link I just found, this crazy story I just heard, a good deal, or some new music. But I’m well aware that my friends don’t want e-mails from me about this every two seconds. The news feed is a way for my friends to see what I’m suggesting and sharing (perhaps via posting a link on del.icio.us or broadcasting a song on iLike). But it doesn’t clog inboxes with each instance of a posting, or even alert me each time something new happens. I just get one simple login page with all the activities of all my friends (which, by the way, is customizable). Knowing this, I can be less shy about broadcasting my news, which in turn encourages people to post more. That’s great news for people that have content they want moving through Facebook. The more content moving around, the better for all content providers.
Clearly the news feed is important. In fact, it’s the core of what Facebook really is. After all, if it’s the home page, they’re saying that’s the key—the starting point—right? So whereas Friendster was in the end a way to connect with friends, for Facebook, the connections are just a means to an end. All those connections you have are the bedrock of your Facebook activities. It decides whom you broadcast to and where your broadcasts come from. The truth is, as cute as it is, Facebook’s name is a horrible mistake. In fact, to accomplish its goals, I don’t think Facebook even cares if you have a picture of your face on your profile, or really if you have a profile altogether. Your “Facebook page” is really just a home page, a sort of place holder, to represent yourself as a node in the connections of your network so that you can appropriately receive and send broadcasts.
Implications of broadcasting and sharing through social networks
Of course, then the question is, why is broadcasting important at all? Truth is, right now, it’s really not all that important. But in a few years it may very well change the way you find things on the web. The news feed on Facebook is a great form of social web discovery. It brings you programs web sites, people and more, both within Facebook and without, based on what your friends are doing. That’s great for the “light push” we’ve talked about. But what about when you’re more actively looking for something? It’s great to suddenly discover a group devoted to fans of the movie Office Space because your friend Brett joined it. But what if you’re looking to buy a digital camera and no one on your news feed has done anything related to that recently? One of the incredible things about applications on Facebook, thanks to the very well crafted API, is that they have access to your friend’s activities and information (in an anonymous and safe way). Imagine a Facebook based social search, where you could type in “digital camera” and search results might be prioritized based on what your friends already found to be relevant if they’ve done this search before. That would probably be based on an algorithm combining factors such as what they’ve clicked on before, what sites they bounced (i.e. left quickly because they didn’t find what they were looking for) and what they’ve actually purchased. It’s the web equivalent of asking your friends for advice on your search for a good camera.
You’re already familiar with that type of information gathering. You’re at dinner with some friends and you say “oh, guys, I’m looking to get a new camera, any new ideas?” And two people recommend the same Cannon Elph and you trust their opinion – they’re your friends, after all. You hang out because you share common opinions and you share common life experiences, so you trust what they have to say more than anyone else. A search engine based on Facebook would have the same effect. You’ve built your little network of friends. And now, let them advise you en masse based on their past history of related activity.
Where’s Google?
Of course, that’s Facebook style social networking. Once we start talking about social search, you of course have to look to search giant Google. I think Google sees social networking as a far more dynamic concept than Facebook does. Think about the way they populate your Gmail Chat contacts. It dynamically updates based on people you’ve been in e-mail touch with. Pretty smart. They don’t stop and ask “who do you want as your contacts” the way Facebook asks who your friends are, or make you build your “buddy list” from the ground up. And Google already applies this sort of dynamic historical intelligence in search. If you have a Gmail account, you’re by default logged in to Google even for search and Google delivers what they call “personalized search results.” They explain that “Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on what you’ve searched for on Google and which sites you’ve visited.” Again, that’s a pretty smart idea because it’s dynamic. They don’t stop to ask you as an interstitial step “please select what factors are most important to you while searching.” They decide that for you based on what you’ve told them is important in the past based on prior usage. So what’s Google’s social networking plan? Of course I don’t know exactly. But I don’t think it has much to do with the Friendster-like Orkut program that they own and is so popular in . . . Brazil.
But think about little things like this: Gmail is one of the fastest growing e-mail programs and the inbox is the starting point for many people on the web. Gmail also has a “web clips” application which dynamically (starting to sense a theme?) populates RSS feeds based on your web history. What if web clips started feeding you information of your friends’ web activity, much like the Facebook news feeds, based on your frequently e-mailed contacts? And how would Google know what your friends are up to? For one, your search history and related exit links. But beyond that Google Analytics is one of the fastest growing web analytics tool in the world. With the simple javascript they’ve already got on millions of web pages, you theoretically could OPT-IN to be tracked by them for broadcasting certain information to your friends (and for further customization on the sites you visit, but that’s a whole other story). There are a lot of possibilities. The bottom line is this: In the future, you won’t have to actively join a social network. The web will BE a social network. And you’ll reap the benefits, finding new information in ways none of us could ever imagine.
Written by J. ThompsonPopularity: 100% [?]
Sphere: Related Content
August 14th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Great posting. What I understand from your article is that social search will enable you to not only find items of interest (as is, generally-speaking, already possible), but provide you with the added layer of confidence and increased relevance as an outgrowth of the trust-relationship we naturally have with our own social networks.
This actually solves an important problem raised by Fred Wilson in his posting on the relevance/effectiveness of recommendation based services such as amazon and yelp (http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/08/taste-neighbors.html).
But the point you raise at the bottom is fascinating; will the ultimate social-search application arise out of a dynamic or interactive infrastructure. The answer is likely a powerful combination of the two. Lots of interesting discussion to be had on this topic!
Thanks!
August 15th, 2007 at 9:17 am
[…] is where it gets interesting. Both Fred Wilson and Mark Mezrich post at length about yesterday. You can pull in all the status updates and news updates you want […]
August 15th, 2007 at 11:55 am
My cause for reproach with how you see things progressing with social searching (or Google’s quest to organize the world’s data in general) is the lack of privacy. Understandably, if you put something in your stream of consciousness RSS feed, then obviously you’re ok broadcasting whatever you write. However, simply because we’re linked based off some friendship, do I want you seeing my searches? All of this just rubs me the wrong way at times.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Steven, I see what’s scary about that and I never realized that more so than when I was writing those words in this blog post itself. BUT, if Google wanted to “do evil” as they called it, they could have done it long ago. I’m just throwing out some ideas of how Google already has access to who your friends are and what they’re doing. I don’t think the actual implementation will be as rudimentary as I’ve described it above. In fact, the whole point is that it needs to be seamless. Whatever their goals, I have faith that Google will accomplish it in a way that doesn’t intrude and truly incentivizes people to be involved.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
I know it’s trite but the ever truthful phrase ‘power corrupts’ keeps running through my head when thinking of Google. Ultimately time and the market will show Google’s true colors. Until the, it will probably be a fun ride.
August 15th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Incredible, there really seems to be no doubt after reading your argument about where the world is going - and what company is in the best position to reap the untold riches of this new paradigm.
August 15th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Thanks, Jack. Although the great part is, it’s all part of an effort to help people find more of what’s out there and have that content be better suited for them. If that’s the case, there are two big winners besides Google (or even Facebook): 1) consumers, and 2) smaller online content providers. If people are really getting what’s best for them on the web, and things can spread more quickly and virally, then the small site with the great idea doesn’t need to have the same dollar/marketing muscle to get noticed by its target audience.
August 18th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
hi i enjoyed the read
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:11 am
Hmm…you know what rubs me the wrong way–not to be an ass–but people who are so scarred of their friggin privacy. The whole idea is that by sharing a little we get tons of free shit. Period. It’s really lame that THATS all people can focus on. Either way, I’m pretty sure those people will be left behind. Besides, google doesn’t plan to, for instance, say “your semi-friend, bobby, was also searching for hardcore gay porn, and here’s what he chose…” No, it will just use a vast network of friends separated by many degrees of separation to pull up links closer to what you were looking for….So stop all this scaredy cat shit, and get in the know about something very uself. Its just the unknown that you’re scared of anyway.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:12 am
PS. i had to leave one angry rant comment on a blog posting at least once in my life!
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:51 am
Thanks James, glad it was here
But seriously, I hear you (as I’m sure you can tell from my original post). Generally these privacy issues don’t scare me much, but as you can see, it does scare off some and that’s a real issue that google, facebook and other are going to have to deal with in some way. But I do think it will be less of an issue as the (poorly named) MySpace generation comes of age - they’re very used to the public lifestyle already.