Band of Slugs

Oh Lordy, Google Gives Us Another Social Network

You should probably Tweet that?

Okay, this is taking the mickey now.  Google Buzz will now be included in Google Mail to take on Twitter, who is stealing share from Facebook who in turn made MySpace redundant.  Right, so this is in addition to Google Orkut, Google Wave, Google Talk and Google Boss Alarm.  Google Buzz basically means you can do in Google Mail what you can do on Twitter, or Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Bebo, LinkedIn etc etc – so why should you care?

Put simply, you shouldn’t.  Because before long someone will develop a method for updating your Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, Talk, Orkut, LinkedIn, Bebo and MySpace from the same place – a mash-up that will leave all the individual sites as nothing more than delivery platforms with less relevance on the user interface, and consequently advertising revenues.  Hence the “race to the bottom” that is going on right now.

The solution?  There isn’t one.  Money is there to be made and you and I are merely a metric in their KPIs.  If you go to a different social network they lose money and therefore you must be stopped at all costs.  Again, you need not care because eventually it will all balance out and the various SocNets will focus on core areas – Flikr and YouTube are great examples of this and expect all the players to start finding their niche soon.  Facebook will likely become the SMS of the SocNets, MySpace will promote your shit band and announce your boring gigs that only your mates go to, Bebo will be solely the domain of Chavs and people under the age of 12.  LinkedIn already handles your feeble attempt at freelancing and Orkut might not even exist anymore?