Social networking. If anything has become big in terms of mass global success in the later half of this decade it is social networking. Whether you’re trying to de-tag yourself from painfully embarrassing photos from a night out, blogging about your emo woes, or telling the world what you think in 140 characters or less there are now several ways that people can organise their own lives online. The power of these services are certainly similar to that of a great destroyer – websites like Friends Reunited are declining in popularity due to the fact that people could get the same service for free on Facebook rather than having to pay.
But in the last three years something interesting has happened. In 2007, a year after the entire world went crazy for MySpace, Facebook was starting to make waves with the status updates, cleaner interface and much more in the way of actual networking. As a result, MySpace had to react and they instead copied everything that made Facebook really good. Facebook was on a roll until early this year when Twitter exploded thanks to a certain Stephen Fry and recently Facebook had to retaliate to keep people using it. How? By copying Twitter entirely. Soon, MySpace will copy those features that are now to be found on Facebook. Basically, social networks have become a chain where once something new and exciting pops up, the old services that were once the same thing will copy them.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that social networking is eating itself. It’s difficult to predict the future in the world of technology where every second will see something new develop. However, one can’t help but imagine what new social networking trend will emerge next and, perhaps more importantly, how other social networking services will try to make the most of it. There is a great skit on the brilliant The Day Today where they run through fake TV listings and mention an off-the-wall documentary that follows a family in their daily lives via cameras inserted right into the face of each family member. I think someday in the near future we will have that reality and what’s more, in keeping with the Web 2.0 theme, it will be a social networking site. Think YouTube but live streamed – just think of the number of things you could sneakily watch! If someone is reading this and wants to make it work, get in touch so that we can talk about finance…
