David Sacks writes an interesting article over at TechCrunch on The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter. In the article he argues that it is the “bread” of the social network that will make the new portals successful and not the “Peanut Butter” of the applications that are layered over the top. The announcement this week of Facebook opening up their API to widget developers is a way for them to give access to their “bread” whilst allowing other condiment vendors access which in turn drives the adoption of more bread.
I believe, though, that another thing is needed to make the new portals wildly successful: adoption. Myspace and Facebook have achieved remarkable penetration in terms of market share in the social networking arena but they have a long way to go to reach the penetration of services like Google. Both of them have created a user base and a prominence amongst the web2.0 crowd but the web2.0 crowd is not the whole ball game.
Facebook and Myspace bootstrapped themselves initially by concentrating on a particular demographic: Facebook inside colleges and universities and myspace in the music industry. This allowed them to spread virally inside these demographics until they reached second stage prominence with the techno savvy. The challenge for these services now is to go beyond the technically savvy to the general internet population.
Going back to the analogy, say you open a chain of bread shops that also offer a tasty range of sandwich toppings. You start in a neighborhood, build success and reputation and then expand into other neighborhoods, even a whole city. The challenge comes when you want to take your bread shop chain nationally or internationally. The word of mouth advertising that you have been able to generate to date isn’t necessarily going to help you break into new markets where the social connections between the markets you are successful in and the new markets are few and far between. Also you are relying on a critical mass of people within the new “neighborhood” to support your new shop so it can be successful.
From the perspective of someone who thinks of himself as somewhat web2.0 savvy amongst a group of friends who are not, this represents an issue. Yes Facebook or Myspace would offer me value but only if there are enough other people I know who are also involved. Facebook and Myspace need to offer me enough to make me want to join up without necessarily having the rich network that provides the real value and then offer me ways to encourage my friendship network to join. Until then I will stay with the individual services that offer me value like Geni.
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on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under tech, life.
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David Sacks writes an interesting article over at TechCrunch on The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter. In the article he argues that it is the “bread” of the social network that will make the new portals successful and not the “Peanut Butter” of the applications that are layered over the top. The announcement this week of Facebook opening up their API to widget developers is a way for them to give access to their “bread” whilst allowing other condiment vendors access which in turn drives the adoption of more bread.
I believe, though, that another thing is needed to make the new portals wildly successful: adoption. Myspace and Facebook have achieved remarkable penetration in terms of market share in the social networking arena but they have a long way to go to reach the penetration of services like Google. Both of them have created a user base and a prominence amongst the web2.0 crowd but the web2.0 crowd is not the whole ball game.
Facebook and Myspace bootstrapped themselves initially by concentrating on a particular demographic: Facebook inside colleges and universities and myspace in the music industry. This allowed them to spread virally inside these demographics until they reached second stage prominence with the techno savvy. The challenge for these services now is to go beyond the technically savvy to the general internet population.
Going back to the analogy, say you open a chain of bread shops that also offer a tasty range of sandwich toppings. You start in a neighborhood, build success and reputation and then expand into other neighborhoods, even a whole city. The challenge comes when you want to take your bread shop chain nationally or internationally. The word of mouth advertising that you have been able to generate to date isn’t necessarily going to help you break into new markets where the social connections between the markets you are successful in and the new markets are few and far between. Also you are relying on a critical mass of people within the new “neighborhood” to support your new shop so it can be successful.
From the perspective of someone who thinks of himself as somewhat web2.0 savvy amongst a group of friends who are not, this represents an issue. Yes Facebook or Myspace would offer me value but only if there are enough other people I know who are also involved. Facebook and Myspace need to offer me enough to make me want to join up without necessarily having the rich network that provides the real value and then offer me ways to encourage my friendship network to join. Until then I will stay with the individual services that offer me value like Geni.
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under tech, life.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
