They will find some of us who think that these splits are onerous will
be deciding to use less of the social networks instead of following all
of the splits.
David
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it
costs when it's free
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it
costs when it's free."*---P. J. O'Rourke*
On 4/28/2014 1:10 PM, BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical
Centrist Community wrote:
Why the Social Networks Are Falling Apart
The social networks are falling apart -- breaking up into multiple
sites and apps that do in a scattered way what used to happen
centrally.
By Mike Elgan <http://www.cio.com/author/408971/Mike+Elgan>
Sat, April 26, 2014
Computerworld <http://www.computerworld.com/> âEUR" Once upon a time,
there was a hoodie-wearing college dropout who moved to Silicon Valley
to grow a social network.
At first, Mark Zuckerberg and his staff didn't know what their
business model would be, but they had a strong suspicion that
gathering hundreds of millions of eyeballs on a single site might be
worth something someday.
Eventually and inevitably, Facebook
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9157638/Facebook_Complete_coverage>
introduced advertising to its site. The strategy was clear: Get
everybody to gather at a single location ( Facebook.com
<https://www.facebook.com/>), harvest social signals at that location,
and sell ads that would be displayed at that location. Everyone and
everything in one place.
Facebook made a lot of money, went public, then made a lot more money.
(The company this week reported
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247856/Facebook_Q1_sales_leap_as_mobile_ad_business_grows>
Q1 revenue of $2.5 billion.)
Everything was fine in Facebookland, except for one small problem:
Most users were clearly migrating from desktop to mobile, and nobody
was making significant ad revenue in mobile.
Except Google <https://www.google.com/>.
How did Google
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136345/Google_Update> make
money in mobile? Instead of harvesting personal data in one place and
displaying personalized advertising in that same place, it did both in
multiple places.
Ever since co-founder Larry Page took over the CEO spot from Eric
Schmidt in January 2011, the secret sauce for Google as a business was
the controversial unification of the Google privacy policy
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223691/Google_to_combine_users_data_across_its_services>
in January 2012.
That simple policy enabled Google to harvest user signals and personal
data from one service -- say, search -- and use that information to
personalize advertising on another service -- say, YouTube.
That change ushered in the future of online advertising, as both
Twitter <https://twitter.com/> and Facebook would later discover.
*Facebook outgrows Facebook*
For Facebook, that discovery started with an unwelcome shift in user
behavior. It turns out that many Facebook users, especially younger
users, got tired of interacting on a single site with their friends,
extended families and co-workers -- and everyone else. So in
combination with the flight from desktop to mobile, they increasingly
embraced little apps for social interaction: Snapchat, Instagram,
WhatsApp -- you name it. On these little apps, people could have
unfettered interaction with small tribes of friends without the
public-pronouncement feeling of Facebook.
So Facebook decided to start buying the apps and services that young
users were fleeing to. First, it tried and failed to buy Snapchat
<http://www.snapchat.com/>. After that move proved unsuccessful,
Zuckerberg built his own service, called Poke, but it didn't work out
so well.
Then, about two years ago, Facebook bought Instagram
<http://instagram.com/>. And a couple of months ago the company
announced its intention to buy WhatsApp <http://www.whatsapp.com/> for
about $19 billion. This week, Facebook announced the acquisition of
the fitness app Moves <http://www.moves-app.com/>. (It's marketed as a
fitness app, but in fact its purpose is to track exactly where you are
at all times and give you incentives to label those places to provide
better location data.)
Whenever Facebook acquires such companies, it always says that it's
not going to change anything, and that it's not going to fold them
into Facebook proper. People tend to roll their eyes at these
pronouncements, but I believe Facebook and I'll tell you why in a minute.
These acquisitions were part of a larger "multiple app" strategy by
Facebook that has been complemented by homegrown apps like Messenger
<https://www.facebook.com/mobile/messenger>, Facebook Camera
<https://www.facebook.com/mobile/camera> and Paper
<https://www.facebook.com/paper>.
From a data-harvesting perspective, these various apps fall into the
categories of "who you know," "where you go" and "what you like."
These are the same categories of personal data that Facebook gathers
to provide increasingly relevant and customized advertising at
Facebook.com.
This week, we learned that Facebook plans to unveil a new mobile ad
network
<http://recode.net/2014/04/20/here-comes-facebooks-ad-network-mobile-ads-launching-this-month/>
at its F8 conference next week. The purpose of the network is for
Facebook to sell ads outside of Facebook.com and outside the Facebook
mobile app.
If Facebook's direction or strategy isn't clear, let me spell it out:
Harvest personal data from multiple apps, then sell personalized
advertising in multiple locations.
Here's an oversimplified example: An ad for a Starbucks promotion
presented to you in a mobile game (sold through Facebook's upcoming ad
network) might be based on knowledge that you spend a ton of time at
Starbucks -- information harvested from the Moves app.
As you can see, there's no Facebook -- no social network -- involved
in this series of events. But Facebook gets paid anyway.
Twitter
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9157658/Twitter_update_News_blogs_opinions_and_more_about_the_microblogging_service>
is embracing a "mini" version of this approach.
*Twitter outgrows Twitter*
Twitter acquired Vine <https://vine.co/> in October 2012. As Facebook
did with its social acquisitions, Twitter kept Vine separate and
didn't brand it as a Twitter product.
And last year Twitter acquired a mobile ad network of its own called
MoPub <http://www.mopub.com/>.
Then Twitter this month acquired a company called Gnip
<http://gnip.com/>, which specializes in the harvesting of social
signals for advertising and marketing.
The control and ownership of Vine, MoPub and Gnip demonstrate a shift
in thinking. Twitter is no longer a social microblogging service, but
instead a personalized advertising company that harvests user signals
from wherever and then displays personalized ads wherever.
Which brings us full circle back to Google.
*Google outgrows Google+*
Google this week announced the departure of the guy who, in Larry
Page's words, " built Google+ from nothing
<https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx>." But Vic
Gundotra's departure
<https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL> appears to be
part of a larger de-emphasis of Google+ as a social network that
unifies everything.
The chatter in Silicon Valley is that Google will keep Google+ going,
but invest more heavily in Google+ as a platform, rather than as an
all-purpose destination social network.
In other words, with Facebook outgrowing Facebook and Twitter
outgrowing Twitter, there's no need for Google to drive so many forced
integrations with other Google properties.
Google has realized the same thing Facebook and Twitter have realized:
There's no need for unity. Ubiquity and diversity -- what Google has
succeeded with all along -- is more powerful.
The new model is to harvest social signals from wherever and sell
personalized ads wherever.
Of course, none of the social networks are going anywhere. They're
still important both to their companies and to their users, and they
still play an essential role in user identity and data harvesting and,
for Twitter and Facebook at least, as places to display advertising.
What's important for these companies from a future-facing business
perspective is to have multiple mobile apps that harvest multiple
dimensions of personal data that can be applied to highly customized
and personalized mobile advertising at multiple locations.
The social networks are falling apart -- they're breaking up into
multiple sites and apps that do in a scattered way what used to happen
centrally.
If you're in the personalized advertising business, why restrict
yourself to a single social network? Users don't.
--
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