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Consolidation time for networking sites
Over the last three years, the Internet has given us some amazing things. But let's face it, for most of us the novelty has worn off.
- By Scott Shuey, Chief Business Reporter
- Published: 23:46 December 5, 2008
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Over the last three years, the Internet has given us some amazing things. But let's face it, for most of us the novelty has worn off.
Just three years after the world woke up to Web 3.0, the number of sites is almost overwhelming, but the problem is that very few of them offer unique services.
In 2006, MySpace was THE place to go for social networking (okay, Friendster was also around back then, but it was never as popular), but today there is Facebook, Hi5, Orkut and several others.
What started out as a great way to stay in touch with friends has turned into a chore since you're either forced to manage several different accounts or miss out on what's going on with those few obstinate friends who refuse to sign up for the sites you use.
A number of websites have sprung up to handle that situation, offering to link together the information from several different social networking sites, but now there is even competition in that space. Friendfeed, a media favourite when it launch-ed earlier this year, now has to compete with sites like Power.com. Even Facebook has got into the game with its new program, called Facebook Connect.
It's time for some consolidation, and luckily, it's beginning to happen.
Last week saw the acquisition of Pownce by SixApart, a company that has a catalogue of blogging tools. Pownce was trying to compete with Twitter in the micro-blogging arena, but it's hard to compete when the other company's name has become the buzzword for the entire industry. SixApart announced just after the purchase that it would shut down Pownce by mid-December; they just wanted the company's staff and intellectual property.
Yahoo will probably be next, although it's unlikely that the site would ever be shut down - it's far too big of a name - but the site has fallen behind on the times. Like Pownce with "tweets", Yahoo has to cringe every time they hear someone says "Google it".
The concern, though, is determining where redundancies end and monopolies begin. The US Department of Justice recently decided it would investigate a proposed deal between Yahoo and Google, which later fell through. It's an understandable decision. While there are more search engines out there than you can count, only three of them - Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's Live - really matter. An acquisition giving Google the lion's share of online search market would only put the final nail in the coffin of sites such as Cuil and Viewzi.
But some things out there are clearly redundant. Reuters recently pulled its online news agency out of Second Life, a virtual world that has become synonymous with obsessive and often creepy behaviour. Reuters' idea looked good on paper - embed a journalist inside a virtual world - but as the novelty of Second Life wore off, the company decided the site was more appropriately covered as another part of its technology beat.
Some companies just don't get it though. Research in Motion, the company that makes the BlackBerry mobile, recently launched its own social networking site, iBlast.com, just for the users of it handsets. That sounds like a good idea, but just because people own a BlackBerry doesn't mean they want a network of their own.
Companies must have to realise that just because something can be done on the web doesn't mean it should be. The internet just moves too quickly for new sites that do more of what's already out there.
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