I read an interesting article/exploration by Danah Boyd on the releative successes of Friendster and MySpace. While it is more "anecdotal viewpoint" than classic research (which is what we are all pretty much doing online anyway), it has some interesting nuggets in it. Also - in many ways it is arguing a similar point that I made in the Increasing Tail - platforms who give their users tools to develop the tail end of content almost always win.
Internet archeologists have found remnants of this "Friendster" civilization.
See:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/internet_archaeologists_find
Pretty funny, but spot-on. These online social networking sites go though phases, and already I think Facebook is going the way of Myspace, Friendster, AOL, Prodigy (remember that?), Newsgoups, etc. Twitter will be next.
The half-life of these things seems to be about 3-4 years, but getting shorter with each iteration. I suspect in 10 years, a social networking site can be launched in the morning, peak at noon and be "so 20 minutes ago" by sundown.
Posted by: robertplattbell | December 17, 2009 at 09:46 AM