On Facebook's New Identity
@FredWilson wrote an interesting piece this morning about dispersion in social media. I don't want to over-summarize, so please go read his article, but he basically says that social media will not have a "winner-takes-all" outcome, but more likely a "best-tool-for-each-particular-job" outcome. In other words you will use GetGlue as your "entertainment-social-media tool", but Path as your "sharing-stuff-with-close-friends" tool, rather than use one dominant tool for everything. Sure, a well-done Swiss army knife social site can handle sharing all of this stuff and do it in unique ways based on the particular stuff you're sharing or whom you're sharing it with (a la Google Circles), but in the end it's hard for one company to get all of the types of sharing exactly right. In other words, I mostly agree with @FredWilson's thesis, but wanted to think about its implications for Facebook in particular.
We've often thought about Facebook as the probable winner in the "winner-takes-all" social media sweepstakes, but that actually doesn't seem like it's going to be the case. Facebook has basically taken on the role of "cruft-accumulator" precisely because it is so popular. The site is becoming less and less enjoyable to use for actual active sharing while other, usually more specific-interest-oriented tools like Pinterest become the soup-du-jour. It's still too early to say "Facebook is definitively this" or "Facebook is definitively that", and recent projects like Timeline are certainly intended to breathe new life into active sharing on Facebook. And Facebook continues to dominate as the "social-gaming-active-sharing" tool of choice through its quasi-partnership with Zynga (and others). Nonetheless, it's increasingly clear that Facebook 's main contribution and value is as the keeper-of-identities and linker-of-those-identities across the web.
Just today @JoshConstine has a piece on TechCrunch about the fact that Facebook is quietly rolling out the beta of its ad program which targets ads based on your OpenGraph actions. This is not Facebook creating value because of content actively shared on the site, this is Facebook creating value because of its role as the main identity keeper on the internet. The value of the data Facebook has collected and continues to college is enormous and the company sits pretty singularly as the one company with enough data to reasonably provide a universal internet identity. Facebook is in a pretty enviable position.
Viewed differently, it is also a somewhat precarious position. When stuff gets shared on other sites, even if those sites link that sharing to Facebook through OpenGraph, Facebook loses its monopoly on sharing data. When Path becomes the "actual-friends"-sharing tool, Facebook loses a bit of sheen on its brand. This is not a fatal problem for Facebook -- in fact one might call it the inevitable maturing of the company as it prioritizes Facebook-as-platform over Facebook-as-hit-website. But it's still something to consider -- what does your vision of the internet in 10 years look like? Does it still have Facebook in it?
To be perfectly honest, mine doesn't.
