Stowe raps it out - “it’s about the Context of SNS!”
Stowe Boyd has an excellent rap on “Social Networks: Boring, Broken or off-track?”.
He points out that many people feel that keeping their profiles up to date is tedious and boring at best and that big players like 6A should start building SNS features into their blog tools.
I hope most people know how MySpace got there:
- by focusing on music
- by throwing Raves and parties
- by providing lots of coolio, compelling activities for mating kids to keep themselves busy.
But be clear - MySpace is a dating site. Everything that Jonathan Abrams wanted Friendster to be - MySpace is. But that’s a fairly limited context - for the rest of us.
Social Networking systems need to apply themselves to niche targeted audiences. That’s where they’ll monetize.