I wonder about the extent to which the major social network sites realize they are in the entertainment business. As such, their stickiness is based on novelty, and has an inherent ceiling effect since there is only so much time to devote to entertainment. As the novelty wears off, and there is no answer to the "now what" question, people will start spending their time elsewhere.
It's interesting that the sites seem to have hitched their continued novelty to the 3rd party app bandwagon. Contrast that with another major entertainment platform - game consoles - where the platform providers are also major contributors of novelty (i.e. new games) to help ensure that people stick around. There is also another alternative which Will pointed out - get out of the entertainment business and provide a different kind of value. There is a lot of power locked up in social networks, it's just not being captured right now. Facebook at least seems to realize this and thus is moving in the platform direction, it's just a matter of whether the platform is structured in a way that allows for value extraction. ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
