The Greatest Challenge to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is Unbundling

http://tomtunguz.com/unbundling-of-social-networks

by ttunguz • 13 years ago

51 22 13 years ago

I think this thesis can hold true in many verticals and is overall a solid argument. For example, a user might be okay with paying for premium features on a site like Vimeo, Behance, Elance, etc. when they wouldn't pay for similar features on a generic social network like Facebook or Twitter. You're paying for these premium features because the service provided is much more targeted (and provides more value for your time) or the community is more engaged in your media or conversation (and provides a richer experience).

ttunguz5• 13 years ago

Yes, agreed. Whenever there is a general platform of large scale, an opportunity exists to unbundle and take the most valuable contributors elsewhere.

sek• 13 years ago

I think the biggest problem it creates for the big ones is lack of focus.

By trying to be everything at the same time, they become cluttered and complicated.

technoslut• 13 years ago

The goal is acquiring information and, in this regard, Google is one company that has extended themselves into many areas but seem to keep their focus pretty well. They may be an outlier though.

As for this article, I'm reminded of a similar story with a different point of view posted on Medium: https://medium.com/understandings-epiphanies/aae8d5f880cc

I do question question the long term value of social networks that operate under what has become the traditional advertising model as teens move towards apps that are more privacy conscious.

gz5• 13 years ago

Seems this also means these horizontal giants should focus on adding value to these verticals - helping to develop and grow these ecosystems - focus on evolving their horizontal platform attributes?

ttunguz5• 13 years ago

Yes, the problem is it's hard to scale that while keeping focus on the core.

wslh2• 13 years ago

The natural problem that arises is how to handle many social networks at the same time? I can think of many different specialized social networks to cover my interests but if I don't have a few or a single "console" they will be impossible to handle. Sometimes I need to post to LinkedIn and Twitter, sometimes to Google Plus depending on the audience.

I've written some articles about how I see this future integrations but being self critical I think it is impossible without full APIs. I also wrote recently an article using similar concepts for challenging Google http://blog.databigbang.com/letters-from-the-future-challeng...

thwarted• 13 years ago

I don't mind going to different sites to do different things, rather than having everything handled under one umbrella. Mainly because, for example, I find flickr to be a better photo sharing and management experience than some other site that has photo handling tacked on as a secondary feature.

Admittedly, twitter's interface isn't the best for what it is (and they keep shutting down tools/sites/apps that might end up with a better interface found via experimentation), and there have been (some successful) attempts at a tool that abstracts away the social network and technical part of different sites and lets you interact with more of them at once.

Oddly, it seems other people sometimes do mind going to other sites. Family wanted to know why I didn't post photos to facebook so they could see them. I had been posting links to other sites where I had uploaded them for public viewing and apparently even clicking on a link to go see them was too much cognitive load.

However, what I do mind is the walled garden nature of the different sites that keep me from easily and effectively aggregating all my actions across the internet into a single place: both for my own purposes and as a jumping off point for other people to explore.However, twitter keeps shutting down easy access to my data (I can't tell if the v1 api call for favorites via RSS is still enabled, it seems to periodically work; last I checked, there doesn't appear to be a new way, without oauth, to get a feed of favorites). Facebook has an "export" function, but it seems to be all or nothing and single shot, and integrating. Flickr generally has good external integration via simple RSS, but I think that's because Flickr "gets it": they are a photo sharing site and they are not focused on keeping people on the site. That's most likely due to their monetization model.

Unfortunately, services that did this, like friendfeed and memolane, are dead or dying. It's really hard to create and maintain one, especially one that is more unified interface than just data aggregation, when the landscape for sharing and integration keeps changing out from under you as sites try to lock users in. The focus on creating an all-in-one do-everything experience rather than something that compliments the features of other sites contributes to this, I think.

wslh2• 13 years ago

> I don't mind going to different sites to do different things, rather than having everything handled under one umbrella.

In my perspective things change when you are using services for business rather than personal consumption. There are SO MANY sites that can capture your interest or where you want to just duplicate that blog post or copy your tweet to other sites, and are impossible to manage because we all have 24 hours days.

In some way it is the same problem that arises in the long tail: probably there is a product that a million people want to consume but is unknown. Probably there are hundreds but we humans can't focus and handle periodically so many items. I think the problem is not the lack of resources but tools that help you to pick many of them with a simple interface.

danmaz742• 13 years ago

This is a general law of marketing: You can't be the best at everything, and the more you dilute yourself the more other laser-focused competitors will cut slices from your pie.

Tangentially, Google could have played upon this with plus, if they had made into the social foundation for others to create verticals to rival with Facebook. Too bad they didn't go this way.

tcskeptic• 13 years ago

This sounds interesting, but I'm not sure what it means. Could you explain what Google should have done more fully?

ryanhuff• 13 years ago

I suspect what the commenter meant is that Google could have created an open social platform for others to build upon, resulting in a plethora of specific social implementations targeting many different verticals.

Instead, what we have today is G+ as a glue that provides a social foundation for all of their products, although I hope that G+ will open up soon to allow others to build upon it.

Hitchhiker• 13 years ago

http://cdixon.org/2012/11/23/some-problems-are-so-hard-they-... seems to to have the graphic as well ;-)

danielharan• 13 years ago

And Chris Dixon had the decency to give credit where it's due.

zacharyvoase• 13 years ago

Is it a challenge, though? These 'focused' competitors in many cases might not actually take market share from their more general rivals. It doesn't need to be a zero-sum thing.

ttunguz5• 13 years ago

It's a long term challenge I think. If the most valuable people on the network find value elsewhere....

NoodleIncident• 13 years ago

A social networking site is only valuable to a user once it reaches a critical mass of connections.

Maintaining these connections across multiple accounts is a huge pain. None of the existing social networks have any incentive to make this process easier, whether by providing an export tool or conforming to an open "friends list" standard.

Specialized Craigslist clones can exist because no one wants to sell apartment space to the same people they buy used furniture from. Friends are friends, though; if you want to share videos with them, there's a good chance you want to see what the tweet, too.

rubinelli• 13 years ago

Specialized networks have two paths. One is offer value even if you are the only user. Instagram and Pinterest do this. The other is making sure people join in groups, which is close to what Yammer does.

(There is the dark path of spamming your users' contacts from another network, but we know where it leads.)

ttunguz5• 13 years ago

Yes, right on. Great point.

beachstartup• 13 years ago

right, except craig never had $Billions to buy out all their competitors as soon as they emerge as a threat.

ttunguz5• 13 years ago

yes, balance sheet is really important. CL was never that interested in building a balance sheet by increasing revenues, going public, etc.

The Greatest Challenge to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is Unbundling

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