Thursday 24 September 2009

Where is the Social Networking going?

Whats happening with the social networking world and where are we ending up? Is this world finally going to end on Google? Or a Head on Head fight between Google and every one else? Well I don't care much... eventually over the last few years the way things have changed is amazing, not to forget disturbing...

Previously I had one email account to check, One social networking site to manage and one blog account to maintain, now I am jumbled between several. I have Ning, Stumble, Seesmic, Tumblr, hi5, Tagged, orkut , FB... darn it when is the list ending? Well I am using the collaboration of Better and bitter networks here.. so please don't mind if I am not using your best of the world Social networking site...

With the life changing micro blogging concept twitter and several like usage sites are taking on the toll... billions and billions of micro blogs rushing every where, people started to feel the need of managing all their networks so they can log into one place and manage everything (OpenID), some of them go further .... move cloud concepts have better interfacing between systems... so when this convenience is coming to you why is it going to be Dangerous?????

Well Well... Lets take example of the hospitality services.... Previously people had their own web sites... Hotel XYZ.com where you would go an book your hotels at attractive rates... but that wasnt enough.. a consolidation was needed? Yes it was to tackle the bigger Internet market and increase what Aaron Cohen called as Reach , it succeeded.. yes millions of SEO work and consolidators found good way of business , websites like travelex etc were a good example of such thing? things changed.. consolidation demanded more bigger level of consolidation, globalization and real time interfaces... Companies like Amadeus. Pegasus several other leading consolidating products started bringing in bigger set of data , cheaper rates , easy availability and so many other things....

Wow... its really working great.... but what happens next? Hotels start realizing that they should sell a set of rates on consolidating sites but have cheaper rates on their own? People would go to consolidating interfaces find rates and compare it with the hotel rates directly and book it as it is cheaper? Markups I mean? Of course.. what males money for consolidators? Now with all the interfacing going on... Did someone say that consolidators are doing good but the graph not so better? a brief trend showing link is here for the top 3-4 websites so finally we end up with better results for individual players? and consolidators in a long run would run out of ideas and money?

So those several other websites though popular and giving a consolidation of social platforms really running to block the Internet future?

Well Imagine if consolidating networks would wind up having same features across social platforms, what will these individual players bring out? Wouldn't the add revenue slow down? wouldn't monopoly promoted?

2 years ago when everyone was "Wow FB, what next????" twitter bought a revolution...today we face the lull coming to us already... "Wow Twitter, what next???" I am sure some brains are working there to bring revolutions in Internet world... but where is the social of the social networking going? haven't FB and several others changed the meaning of Social networking? Good or Bad but they have changed it. Ain't some celebs running the race to have maximum (millions and millions) of twitter followers and friends? And people call celebs get stalked? Is the social world going to become public world? Get one account and trace the past and future of a person?

Scared... I am really scared...anyways I am not dying with the way social networking is dying.. The famous quote by the famous person stated below says it

"Growth when unorganized leads to downfall - Sameer"

;) (That was a JOKE)

But I have a question for the drivers of Internet world...

Where are we going with the Social networking world?

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