Clunky Flow

We’ve known the future has been coming for a while but we never really expected it to come so soon.  Recently, we saw traffic to Bebo overtake traffic to Google in Ireland.  Now, we have this report from EContent matter-of-factly presenting a compliation of expert opinion stating that social networking sites ‘are replacing search as the interface to content’.

Just as search has become the de facto interface to content on the web, so have social networks become the entry-point to a much greater and richer internet experience. The Hitwise study revealed the impact that social sites have had in driving traffic to other destinations on the web. Shopping and classified sites, for instance, received 2.4% of their visits directly from MySpace in September 2006—an 83% increase since March.

Against this backdrop, social networking has become a significant force on the web and a part of users’ daily lives, observes Outsell’s Doctor. “The sites are replacing search as the interface to content.”

And, 

Despite the variety of [user generated content] flourishing on the internet, the range of business models and strategies is limited by a lack of imagination and vision.

The basic concept and architecture behind online social networks like bebo, myspace, facebook etc are indistinguishable  from one another and fundamentally indistinguishable from the originals like sixdegrees and friendster.  Some have said that if sixdegrees and friendster were the invention of the automobile, then myspace et al. would be equivalent to the model-T ford.   

All of this leads one to suggest that there remains a lot of opportunity for the innovative in this space. 

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