Social Network Bubble Officially Burst

from the that-was-fast... dept

It was just about a year ago that it seemed like the social networking craze had reached the height of its frenzy when Barry Diller stepped in to buy ZeroDegrees. Just one year later, very few people are talking about social networking any more. Friendster has more or less disappeared from the news and (as if to prove social networking is long gone as something worthy of buzz), Yahoo has finally jumped into the game. So, it seems fitting that Barry Diller is now looking to dump ZeroDegrees, after the me-too social networking site pretty much went nowhere at all. Once again, it's looking like social networking was a bubble where those involved got confused about the difference between investment and revenue.
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  • identicon
    Dan Semaya, 16 Mar 2005 @ 7:42pm

    thefacebook.com

    One social networking site that is actually on the way up is thefacebook.com. Thousands of college students are becoming increasingly addicted to the site because it builds upon real world relationships at school and offers tools that have useful benefits for students such as showing you all of your neighbors and everyone in your classes. It also makes it easy to find old high school classmates as well.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Tim, 17 Mar 2005 @ 4:35am

    No Subject Given

    Give it a few years and I'm sure it'll mature into something usable nicely anyway.

    But otherwise, indeed, when did *you* last use Orkut? :P)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Chris, 17 Mar 2005 @ 6:25am

    No Subject Given

    I called this one over a year ago.
    http://www.odonnellweb.com/mtarchives/000845.php

    It's nice to right once in a while :)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Andrew, 20 Mar 2005 @ 1:25am

    MySpace, Tickle, Facebook, Spoke, Friendster, Link

    All of these guys are doing real revenue....probably in about this order. Consider looking a little deeper on this.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2005 @ 8:52am

      the heat is totally gone

      I was big into Ryze, and excited to get into Orkut eventually, too.

      Ryze was pretty interesting at first - I met at least 70 new people.

      Pretty soon, we all realized that none of us could really help any of us. I made good friends/business relations out of 3 of the 70 at Ryze. And that was that.

      Then Ryze changed their requirements for contacting people. I soon learned if you weren't over there posting in the forums often, people wouldn't check you out.

      I think a place like 43things.com - which has no revenue stream right now - might be a more logical, potentially revenue generating site. And it might work better because people are gathering around an idea, motivated to come back regularly. If its just "meeting friends" - eventually you'll have so many you can't keep up with them, and if it's like Ryze - "looking for business" - if the business doesn't come, its of no use.

      I'm not saying these won't be successful, or generate revenue. Ryze does.

      It's just not the break-through product people expected.



      link to this | view in chronology ]


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