The future of social media
Looking through a whitepaper on Facebook and reading an article ‘if it makes sense to purchase Friendster’ I found some interesting points that I wanted to share. I also made me thing about the future of the different social media networks and
At the end of 2004, Facebook had over 1 million users; today, the number has increased to over 250 million active users. And, while once the social network was limited to college students, today over two-thirds of Facebook users are not in college. In fact, those 35 and over are the fasting growing age group. Facebook reports that the average user has 120 friends on the site; there are over 5 billion minutes spent on Facebook each day worldwide; over 30 million users update their statuses at least once a day; and over 8 million users become fans of Pages each day.
According to Nielsen NetView, in April 2009 the total minutes spent on Facebook in the US reached almost 13.9 billion, a nearly 700% growth over April 2008, and resulted in Facebook being the number one social networking site for that month, far surpassing MySpace, which held the top spot a year ago.
Looking at Friendster (One of the world’s first social networks with strength in Southeast Asia, that at this time is actually looking for a buyer) – Matt Sutton, Managing director at Aktiv Digital commented on it’s potential:
“… Friendster’s largest penetration is in Asia, the world’s largest digital playing field. It actually has very high penetration in large markets with currently low digital spends — namely, the Philippines and Indonesia. This represents a short-term challenge and a long-term opportunity. Friendster is a big brand with huge reach and in this market advertisers tend to cling on to those offline hooks, attributing advertising with buying profile — the ‘if it’s famous I will be too’ approach. But that’s not a long-term defendable proposition, and things get a little more complicated when you look at it from a micro level. Facebook’s huge number of column inches has made it the kid on the street with the hippest trainers. It will find it easier to attract attention. All the big social network players can swallow huge budgets in one booking, so they need to be able to justify the spend they receive against each other. Friendster can co-exist here but it will need to differentiate its audience. The question is, can it do this?”
It made me think about something I heard at AD:Tech earlier this year;
Ian Stewart, Friendster’s Head of Asia said that there in the future of social networking will be a place for every network – each network for each target group. He described the role for the four biggest social networks this way:
- Friendster is the bedroom (Youth/teen)
- Facebook is the living room (Family/friends)
- Linkedin is the boardroom (Business)
- MySpace is the nightclub (Music)
This was backed up by a Forrester Research analyst that said, “If MySpace is about your entertainment life, Facebook is about your whole life.” Facebook which touts itself as helping you “connect and share with the people in your life,” appeals to broad range of consumers. MySpace on the other hand has a younger audience and tends to be more associated with entertainment and music.
So the future seems to bring segmentation and coexistence… Further down the road it will also bring integration and trends like aggregators will grow. In the end when everyone has a profile on several social media platforms there is a need for social media search engines as well as aggregators to make all of it more accessible:
- SPOKEO (Social media search engine)
- WINK (Social media search engine)
- Google Wave (Aggregator)
- Friendfeed (Aggregator recently bought by Facebook)
What do you think the future will bring?
