The Social Networks Phenomena

Ever since the Internet made its way to the vast masses, it has managed to wow us with its ever evolving technology. Many have been able to turn their ideas into reality (some more successfully than others) making available for the masses an universe of online tools on every imaginable category.

The most recent wave has come in the shape of what has been smartly coined as "Social Networks". Websites that provide a space for people to communicate and interact in new ways via their computers. You all know the names of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook. Sites that offer their members the ability to create and share contents with others, interact via posts and chat tools, publish pictures, videos, even music. It's the social heaven for the newer generations.



Yet, I can't seem to get over the fact that these tools are far from being new. The giants of Internet (and some not that big too) have been offering similar products for many years. Yahoo! has GeoSpaces, MSN has Groups, Lycos has Angelfire. Almost every major portal has had functionalities quite similar to those that these relatively new sites now offer. So what is the catch? Why these and not the others?

The answer is simple: popularity. What makes or breaks all of these websites is the magic effect of great PR and word-of-mouth. Users across the Internet jump from one provider to the next based on the popularity of the next new destination. I have moved my pictures from Yahoo! Photos, to Flickr, to Google Photo Album, and who knows where they'll go next (I still refuse to open a Facebook account).
In the 90s having a Hotmail account was cool. ICQ was the most popular chat tool, and AOL was red hot. Since then Google has broken in with its "invitation only" model and captured the attention of the tech community. Skype has changed the concept of chatting, and AOL had to change its business model to survive.
New trends are hard to predict or produce, particularly because there is no proven formula for what will be the next hot item. Surprisingly simple products, such as Craiglist.org, have managed to capture consumer's attention; turning them into avid users, almost fanatics who defend the products with passion. But what is the possible future?

One of the main reasons to jump into new social exchange platforms is in part the novelty of the product and the lack of big corporations' support. Younger generations are still enamored of rebel causes and love to back the little guy. But what's interesting is that once the little guy makes it, they withdraw their support and move on to the next best thing. Growth is sometimes the doom for some of these products, unless they've been snatched up by bigger players with deeper pockets who can figure out a more profitable business model before it's too late.

Fashion is didactic... It takes what worked in the past, improves it, and reuses it making it popular again. The next wave of popular Internet sites will come in the way of a new and improved service that we have used already but had no idea could be used in "this" new way.

Contents networks will maintain their value, based on the quality of their offer. They have financial resources to keep attracting audiences that crave up to the minute information. Social networks built with user-generated contents live another destiny. Contents will continue navigating around the Internet, from site to site, ultimately being left forgotten by those who created them. Unfortunately in the digital world nothing is eternal.