The other day I was catching up on social applications - that is to say, sorting through the list of all the social media apps I haven’t had time to check out. Like anybody, much of my social use is driven by what I like and what fits into my overall work and personal communication styles. So I blog, and I Twitter. I don’t have many photos I want to share with the world, so I don’t use Flickr. (I don’t like having personal stuff like vacation photos just floating out there; I share selectively through my personal blog.) I’ve never been big on social bookmarking, and “vote on the news” stuff like Digg leaves me cold.
None of that is a value judgment on those services; they’re just not for me. On the other hand, I follow the Flickr feed of a local photographer because she’s always putting cool images of Houston there. I do what makes sense for me.
But of course, for professional reasons we all need to keep up with this stuff, so there I was, looking at lots of sites and thinking, “a lot of these people are doing very, very similar things.”
That’s because we’re in a heavy innovation period. There will continue to be lots of new sites popping up with somewhat different - but not that different - feature sets. Some of them will become big (Twitter). Some of them will not catch on the same way (Pownce is a good example; it just doesn’t seem to have the traction despite being a perfectly usable service.) Others will catch up and then have trouble managing their growth and fail - there is business reality to deal with here. (Twitter might fall victim to that, judging from the shakiness of its quality of service, though I hope not.)
But all of this leads to a question: what will the map of the social media space wind up looking like?
Some spaces are already emerging as well defined areas with a set of similar, competing services occupying them. Blogging is a space unto itself, with services (Blogger, Wordpress.com, Typepad, etc.) and do-it-yourself options (Wordpress, Movable Type) already dominating. If we wanted a more general description of this, I’d call it the exposition space - a social media form in which creators put out long form, primarily text-based content.
(Yes, you can share photos and music and videos and all of that on a blog, but it’s always a slight workaround, and there are probably opportunities for someone to offer better tools - as we already see with image sharing via services like Flickr.)
Another space that I think has staying power is the presence space, and Twitter is the leader here. What’s so compelling about Twitter, I think, is that it’s incredibly focused. You share short bursts of text and perhaps a link, and that’s it. You can’t embed a photo or a video, though you can link to it. It’s immediate and it’s communal. If Twitter started trying to be a multimedia service, I think it would hurt it - its elegant simplicity is what makes it something you really can take everywhere, from your PC to your phone and internet appliances.
Where things get fuzzier is when you look at services that have some elements of exposition and presence and other things - like media or file sharing. Tumblr comes to mind here; I’ve played around with it and found no real use for it. That is, again, a reflection of my personal style: I’d rather shout out to the people who follow me on Twitter with something quick, or do something longer and highly personalized on one of my blogs; Tumblr is a disappointing compromise for me. For others, of course, it’s ideal.
What does the overall map of the space look like now? Where are the areas of overlap that are likely to shrink in the future? Which of the spaces will hit mass adoption, and which will remain niches? And who will be the winners and losers in each?
(Tomorrow: the ecosystem and the social media operating system.)
(Note: lots of people have been thinking about how all of these applications and services fit together and how they are used by actual users. I don’t think I’ve lifted anything from anybody here, but certainly reading what people like Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang have to say has influenced my thinking about it, so a nod to them is appropriate - and hereby nodded!)