Ode to a Purpose Built Social Network

Facebook has a big problem. Facebook’s big problem is Facebook.

Social networking applications are not like other businesses. In other businesses, new products built within an existing infrastructure and delivered through existing marketing and distribution channels benefit from economies of scale that help generate higher profits than would be possible on a standalone basis.

Yes, social networking applications benefit from economies of scale in production, marketing, and distribution channels, but they have a unique property that presents a unique challenge: the network itself.

There are two reasons why no single company will ever “own” the social web:

First, social behavior online, as offline, is largely informed by the context of that behavior. Am I conducting this behavior in front of my family, my friends, my co-workers, my best friends? Photos, videos, events, locations – the success of an application on a social network depends as much on the composition of the network as it does on the feature set.

In other words, my connections and the default privacy settings used to mediate my interaction with those connections can contribute as much to the value of an application as the design and functionality.

A location sharing feature is meaningless to me in the context where the default is to share with the 459 friends I’ve accumulated from who knows where on Facebook. Facebook could design the greatest location sharing application ever invented, but I’d rather recreate a social network on Foursquare, specifically for the use of that feature, than attempt to navigate the myriad privacy options on Facebook to more appropriately control my sharing.

Second, it’s easier to do one thing very well, then to do many things very well. To get a sense of what I mean, download and play around with Instagram. This application is 100% purpose built for mobile photo sharing. It integrates with Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, and Facebook. There are no other distractions in the application, no other purposes than to take a photo and share it with a group of people that you believe would find that photo relevant. It’s a great experience – just ask one of the one million users who signed up within the first two months of the product’s existence.

Taken together, these two arguments lead us to the fundamental point: the value of the user experience in the purpose built application, both in terms of functionality and appropriate social context, easily outweighs the cost of switching and rebuilding that context from scratch.

Facebook isn’t going anywhere, but they will never “own” the social web. They will forever be limited by their generality.


Warning: sprintf(): Too few arguments in /home/jakelevine/webapps/blog3/wp-content/themes/codium-extend/functions.php on line 190
Posted on by . This entry was posted in economics, identity, social. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.twitter.com/sugdaddy Michael Shafrir

    Been meeting a lot of companies/founders that are assuming away the fact that facebook is/owns the social graph/web and building companies around that assumption. And what of Facebook Connect becoming the de facto login across websites of all stripes?

    • http://www.jakelevine.me jakelevine

      If those founders are interested in building a generic, gigantic, one-size-fits-all social web, then I’d say yes, that gig is up. But the social web will be “owned” by a set of smaller services that better reflect the various facets (both in terms of usage and context) that comprise our identities.

      Re: Facebook Connect as the de facto social platform for publishers: as with other activities, consuming, sharing, and commenting needs to take place within the most relevant social context. Facebook Connect doesn’t support this type of social nuance.

      • http://www.twitter.com/sugdaddy Michael Shafrir

        We consistently find the exact polar opposites of this argument. Fascinating.

        • http://www.jakelevine.me jakelevine

          Let’s hear it….

          • http://www.twitter.com/sugdaddy Michael Shafrir

            My thesis — “most” people want a one-stop shop with just-good-enough features of the core functionality of the social web.

            Your thesis (paraphrasing and parsing) — “most” people want a customized experience built around a specific use-case and are willing to put in a non-trivial amount of work building a unique social network around that specific feature.

            We may both be right.

          • http://www.jakelevine.me jakelevine

            I think reality is somewhere in between. Right now I’d say the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of your statement, and the early successes of Instagram, Foursquare, Groupme, are reactions to that extreme.

  • Olivier

    You can as well extend this argument not only to features but also to topic. It seems to me even more obvious that people gather (and thus create new graphs) not just because they like the same feature (posting photos, geolocate or whatever), but because they share the same interests and hobbys.

    So to follow your argument, I would say the value of entering a vertical community built around a topic, interest or hobby we like, easily outweighs the cost of rebuilding a set of new relations. To go even further, I would say building new relations IS actually the user experience vertical communities can provide, compared to broad networks like Facebok.

    • http://www.jakelevine.me jakelevine

      Yes – agreed. I meant to keep the argument agnostic with respect to facets (identity, hobbies, interests, social proximity) – these are all ways of slicing the social graph.

      I really like your comment that the network is the user experience. The network (and the privacy policies associated with that network) are as much a part of the product as the feature set.

      • http://twitter.com/oissaly Olivier Issaly

        Hum, I’m not sure it can make sense to slice by feature and interests, choose one :) You’re either general and feature specific (as you mention Instagram, Foursquare, etc.), or interest specific but providing full feature. But I agree with you, being general and full-feature as Facebook is heading lessen the user experience…

  • http://birch.co/ Mark Birch

    Interesting idea and thought provoking post. This will always be the part and parcel of the struggle to see what wins: deeply specific or broadly applicable. It was the core challenge I had when developing enterprise products when you had specific functions, specific industries and specific customer profiles. We went horizontal and developed a massive ecosystem of tools and services built on us. There were plenty of vertical players however the thrived as well with whom we competed.

    At the end of the day, we will have Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn as the backbone of the social “webs”, but niche players will find room to thrive. Ultimately, people want both; the platform to connect and the applications to do.

    • http://www.jakelevine.me jakelevine

      Good points and nice analogy, though I’m not sure broad vs. specific is nuanced enough to capture and adequately explain how we behave in different social contexts. For another blog post!

      • http://birch.co/ Mark Birch

        Certainly lots of nuance and degrees that one can explore…look forward to your next post!

  • Pingback: The Social Web is Splintering (ftw) | jake levine