antti.vilpponen.net

I’ve been talking about this to some of my friends for quite some time that we might see something like this in the near future and now I’m starting to see it in my own behaviour. I’m talking about Facebook being so powerful of a community that it’s disturbing the use of other social sites, despite it lacking the features of these other social sites. This is something that sites with strong social aspects should be worried about. Seriously worried.

The use of the social application I mainly see myself questioning is Jaiku. Now that it has closed registrations, it’s hard to invite people to use it and I only have about a bunch of people using the application. This of course results in the whole application not being very useful, even though I consider myself being in the innovator/early adopter groups with regard to the technology life cycle.

Facebook on the other hand is not that useful (especially from the mobile) and it’s not really micro blogging when you change your status line. However, it has severe social implications. My friends are able to see what I’m up to, and what’s really scary is that almost all my friends are using it to update their status. Those that use this feature know how clumsy and detached it is from your usage patterns – you have to open your browser, sign in to Facebook, change your status as compared to Jaiku’s take your phone and post a new Jaiku.

I find myself wondering if I should stop using Jaiku, because it doesn’t fulfil its social use anymore – Facebook is simply so much more powerful, there’s a lot more social pull. This of course will be a major problem for other sites with strong social aspects, such as LinkedIn, Last.fm and so forth. Only when the social groups that dominate the applications in your own circle of friends are far enough from each other is there a chance of adoption for you with regard to that application. With Jaiku, it shares pretty much the same social group with Facebook and therefore I find myself questioning the use of it when there’s a lot more value in using Facebook (despite lacking the features).

What does this all add up to?
Well, it certainly affects the way websites and companies should see their line of business and strategy of growing as well as their product development. It’s pretty self evident that you have to have the features to grow and keep the user base satisfied, but these features should very strongly support social interaction in your service – only then do they create enough stickiness and glue. The power of the website and the business is definitely in the community and how well the company can hang on to, and develop, that community.

There’s also a big question to ask in terms of Roger’s theory of diffusion. Is the theory itself valid anymore or are the diffusion cycles dramatically shorter in social applications. Do innovators matter anymore, when you can directly tap into the mass market and due to the architecture of the application, spread very rapidly in that group?

Update: TechCrunch and VentureBeat are reporting on a “gang-up” on Facebook. Seems like I wasn’t alone with the thinking.

Book Depository is not your ordinary book store online. It’s got a massive and very competitive range of books and even some audiobooks. The prices are almost always better than Amazon’s and what’s best: Delivery is free!

I just ordered Getting Things Done by David Allen and Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki Рtotal price including delivery £13.02, not bad.

Sorry Roxie, but this leaves me wondering about the Americans :) Helsingin Sanomat published some results from different studies that quite honestly are shocking:

• According to the State Education Study, about 33% of Washington’s Washington D.C.’s citizens are illiterate.
• About one third of Americans are scientifically illiterate, meaning they are unable to understand simple scientific material for example from a newspaper says the US Science Academy (own translation)
• John D. Miller from the Michigan State University rightly argues that this could be the reason why most of the Americans are unable to understand evolution, DNA or global warming.
• About 20% of Americans believe that the sun revolves around Earth.

Sigh….

Haven’t had the time to blog last week, which was yet again pretty hectic. Over the weekend I exchanged e-mails with a certain Indian person wanting to publish our article in a book in India. The article was previously published in Journal of Interactive Advertising. It’s interesting to see how your work gets spread around in the internet era :)

Yesterday I held a 4-hour lecture on Internet marketing. It was an interesting experience as I really had to dig out certain things and put them on paper to talk about them. It forces you to form an opinion of most of the things you’re talking and in that sense is a sort of self-educating experience. Last, but definitely not least I endured a 4,5 hour poker tournament of No Limit Texas Hold’Em with some friends and managed to take the victory home.

An excellent way to start the weekend…

I haven’t had the time to blog for ages, apologies for that. But last weekend was a blast meeting different very interesting people. On Friday, I went to play monopoly with future economists with a few friends and new friends to be at KY. There was a lot of hassling and dealing going on – the famous Marrakech marketplace would have seem like a calm place compared to our dealing.

On Saturday, I took part in the HSE BScBA Alumni’s annual Crab Party. Crab, shots and another night out – tough. It’s always nice to see alumni members from as far back as BBA 5s taking part and partying like it was 1998 :-)

Anyhow, there’s lots going on and thus the lack in blogging. Oh, and I finally finished The Long Tail only start with Jack Trout’s Differentiate or Die (don’t know how I’ve managed to skip this great book for so long).