"We depend on Facebook for our social graph, and Twitter for our “interest graph."

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:24:40 +0200

“We depend on Facebook for our social graph, and Twitter for our “interest graph.””

- John Battelle

Is Facebook threatened by the giants - Cisco, IBM, Oracle..?

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:39:00 +0200

Fast Company’s Adrian Ott argues that Facebook’s reign as the king of social networking can be disrupted by the giants, i.e. IBM, Cisco, Oracle…

I don’t think so. Let’s see why.

Facebook attention entropy

User’s interest is declining, because Facebook is not new and exciting anymore. I’d also argue that it takes time for users to get their Facebook right.

Many start by adding all the colleagues, friends, acquaintances only to discover later that having so many people as Facebook friends prevents them from posting personal stuff (privacy issues now potentially mitigated by Facebook groups).
In other cases, they start sharing links & videos on Facebook. Later only to realise that those great business articles that they devoured on HBR are of no interest to their Facebook friends.
The endless stupid game & quiz invites can annoy even the most patient. For the less IT-literate it is not dead obvious how to block them for good.
Photos, links, status updates… what else? In essence this is what Facebook is about. Pretty simple, but powerful. The ‘powerful’ bit is not dead obvious at first.

For many the breaking point when they decide not to actively use Facebook is not too far away from the signup. The challenge then is explaining users what Facebook is for and providing them the tools to easily customise thei experience. And doing it just after sign up.

What about a single BIG button which would block all stupid apps & games leaving only the actually useful services (i.e. Flickr, Skype etc)? I know I’d love that.

What if Facebook recommended users to use Twitter for reaching out to like minded people? In the end, that’s what Twitter is for. The best thing about it is that Facebook & Twitter are not even competitors. So why not collaborate and help their users choose the right tool instead of leaving them to figure it out themselves?

For this to happen Facebook needs to stop being all things at once and instead start being what it really is - a personal social network - a database of relationships that can be harnessed by other services.

This is where the IBMs and Ciscos and Oracles should step in.

IBMs and Ciscos and Oracles are no competitor to Facebook

Here’s why ICOO (IBM, Cisco & others) are not a threat to Facebook:

Social DNA (term coined by John Battelle). Neither of the giants has the corporate culture to support social. Yes, IBM has been working on their internal social space for years. Yes, Cisco has great tech for video-conferencing. None of this matters. This is more of a corporate culture and management thing. Is IBM’s culture radically different from Facebook’s? I bet it is.
Consumer products come first. It used to be that products where created for businesses and then they were being used by consumers (think desktop). It used to be that the military was the first adopter of new technologies. Neither is the case now. Both businesses and military are increasingly using the tools that were developed for consumer usage. Are ICOOs going to reverse the pattern? Are ICOOs going to offer tools for consumers? If history is any guide, anyone who has used Cisco’s Webex or IBM’s Lotus Notes knows that ICOOs are incapable of understanding ordinary consumers. Over-complicated enterprise-grade-IT is too deep in their DNA to change any time soon.
Data inertia. This one’s simple. As long as aunt Suzie keeps uploading her birthday pics Facebook I’ll be using it. Hard to compete when 500 million users are tied to their auntie’s pics.

The case for collaboration

Instead of creating new online social networks ICOOs should connect to Facebook. This would be a win-win situation for all parties involved.

This would give users more reasons to use Facebook (instead of being limited to links, photos & status updates) and help Facebook fight attention entropy
Give ICOOs a 500 million strong social network to slice, analyse and provide their offering on top
For users Facebook would become the central personal relationship database. Instead of having to login to many networks they would one.

For this to happen - first, Facebook needs to stop being all things at once. Second, Facebook should stop experimenting with privacy settings - this undermines the trust. Third, ICOOs need to swallow the pill and come to terms with their strengths (robust & secure enterprise-grade services & tools) and weaknesses (lack of social DNA, poor understanding of consumers).

An opportunity not a threat

As we’ve seen with climate change, any problem can be translated to an opportunity for businesses. In the social networking space there’re quite a few problems. Let’s watch the space.

"So far we don’t have a system that lets us really instrument who we are online in a fashion..."

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:15:46 +0300

“So far we don’t have a system that lets us really instrument who we are online in a fashion that scales to the complexity of true human interaction.”

- John Battelle