Social media evolution
Oon YeohPublished: May 3, 2011 3:09 AM | Updated: May 3, 2011 3:19 AM
Web-based emails, instant messenging services and search engines have had their bright stars come and go. And so it is with social media.
One of the first bright sparks in the social media world was Friendster , which burst into netizens’ collective consciousness in 2003. That year, a column in the influential San Jose Mercury News , described it as a “red-hot” website where “friends can hook up with friends of their friends”.
Web-based emails, instant messenging services and search engines have had their bright stars come and go. And so it is with social media.
One of the first bright sparks in the social media world was Friendster, which burst into netizens’ collective consciousness in 2003. That year, a column in the influential San Jose Mercury News, described it as a “red-hot” website where “friends can hook up with friends of their friends”.
It quickly won the backing of such angel investors as former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, former Yahoo CEO Tim Koogle and Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. It also reportedly turned down a US$30 million buyout offer from Google.
In light of what you can do with social media today, what Friendster had to offer back then was very rudimentary. You can build up your profile, add friends into your network, post messages to them. But back then this was something new.
In fact, in the movie The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is seen asking the Winklevoss twins, who wanted to engage him to create a social network site, how theirs would be different from Friendster.
Through Friendster, not only were you able to find long lost friends but you could meet new ones. What's there not to like? Many young people flocked to it.
Then, Facebook came along in 2004, with a cleaner interface and crucially, with a culture where people used their real names and photos. Facebook’s tidy look and real identity culture appealed to grown-ups.
At first, the kids still stuck to Friendster but over time, as Facebook added games and a host of new features and capabilities, it started to gain traction with the Friendster crowd too. Within a year of its launch, Facebook had four times as many members as Friendster.
In late 2009, it was announced that a Malaysia company, MOL Global, had actually bought over Friendster. There was much speculation by tech columnists, myself included, whether the site would focus on gaming as its parent company was big into that sector.
Turns out the speculation was right. It’s just been announced that Friendster will be converted into to a social entertainment site with a focus on gaming and music. Existing accounts will remain, but all photos, messages, comments, testimonials, blogs, forums and groups will be deleted from the account by May 31.
Now a spent force
Meanwhile, MySpace, the other once-stellar social networking site, is also facing tough times and its owners News Corp is reportedly putting it up for sale at a relatively measly price tag of US$100 million.
News Corp had paid US$580 million for MySpace in 2005, when it was viewed as the next new thing. It was once valued at US$12 billion when News Corp attempted to merge it with Yahoo in 2007.
But like Friendster, it is now a spent force in social media. Last year, News Corp converted MySpace into a social entertainment site with a focus on music, movies and celebrities.
Its membership continues to decline though. In March, MySpace traffic dropped 49% from a year earlier to 36.1 million unique visitors in the US, its lowest monthly total since February 2006, according to comScore, a research house.
MySpace’s inability to reverse its fortunes naturally makes you wonder whether Friendster’s attempt at reinvention will succeed.
If there’s anything that’s obvious about social media it’s that you cannot go head-to-head with Facebook, which now has over 600 million members, and hope to survive. If you adopt a special niche, however, you might just make it. In the case of Twitter, not only has it manage to survive, it’s actually thriving, and is a key player in the social media world. As is LinkedIn, which also has a very different focus from Facebook.
A new social media start-up, WhenTheMeetingsOver.com (WTMO), obviously knows that. So, while it has many of the usual features that all social networking sites would have, its target market is different: Business people who would like to link up with like-minded people while overseas on business trips.
“WTMO embraces the fact that we are all busy and provides an environment to optimise our time online whether that’s networking, arranging a night with friends or looking for something different in a new city,” says WTMO’s CEO Stuart Dawson.
And, in distinguishing itself from the 800-pound gorilla that is Facebook, Dawson adds: “It’s not designed for the Facebook generation of soul-baring wall writers, but for professionals that require a purpose-built social network to enhance their work/life balance.”
Currently the site provides members with the latest business and lifestyle content through its city guides and blogs with categories like Business, Fashion, Sport, Entertainment, Travel, Food & Drink, Technology and Current Affairs.
It’s an interesting concept but they have two key challenges. With most business people already on Facebook and many on Twitter and LinkedIn, will WTMO be able to offer something compelling enough for users to adopt a fourth social networking site? More interestingly, what will it do if Facebook decides to offer something similar?
OON YEOH is managing editor of AsiaReach Media. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/oonyeoh.
One of the first bright sparks in the social media world was Friendster, which burst into netizens’ collective consciousness in 2003. That year, a column in the influential San Jose Mercury News, described it as a “red-hot” website where “friends can hook up with friends of their friends”.
It quickly won the backing of such angel investors as former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, former Yahoo CEO Tim Koogle and Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. It also reportedly turned down a US$30 million buyout offer from Google.
In light of what you can do with social media today, what Friendster had to offer back then was very rudimentary. You can build up your profile, add friends into your network, post messages to them. But back then this was something new.
In fact, in the movie The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is seen asking the Winklevoss twins, who wanted to engage him to create a social network site, how theirs would be different from Friendster.
Through Friendster, not only were you able to find long lost friends but you could meet new ones. What's there not to like? Many young people flocked to it.
Then, Facebook came along in 2004, with a cleaner interface and crucially, with a culture where people used their real names and photos. Facebook’s tidy look and real identity culture appealed to grown-ups.
At first, the kids still stuck to Friendster but over time, as Facebook added games and a host of new features and capabilities, it started to gain traction with the Friendster crowd too. Within a year of its launch, Facebook had four times as many members as Friendster.
In late 2009, it was announced that a Malaysia company, MOL Global, had actually bought over Friendster. There was much speculation by tech columnists, myself included, whether the site would focus on gaming as its parent company was big into that sector.
Turns out the speculation was right. It’s just been announced that Friendster will be converted into to a social entertainment site with a focus on gaming and music. Existing accounts will remain, but all photos, messages, comments, testimonials, blogs, forums and groups will be deleted from the account by May 31.
Now a spent force
Meanwhile, MySpace, the other once-stellar social networking site, is also facing tough times and its owners News Corp is reportedly putting it up for sale at a relatively measly price tag of US$100 million.
News Corp had paid US$580 million for MySpace in 2005, when it was viewed as the next new thing. It was once valued at US$12 billion when News Corp attempted to merge it with Yahoo in 2007.
But like Friendster, it is now a spent force in social media. Last year, News Corp converted MySpace into a social entertainment site with a focus on music, movies and celebrities.
Its membership continues to decline though. In March, MySpace traffic dropped 49% from a year earlier to 36.1 million unique visitors in the US, its lowest monthly total since February 2006, according to comScore, a research house.
MySpace’s inability to reverse its fortunes naturally makes you wonder whether Friendster’s attempt at reinvention will succeed.
If there’s anything that’s obvious about social media it’s that you cannot go head-to-head with Facebook, which now has over 600 million members, and hope to survive. If you adopt a special niche, however, you might just make it. In the case of Twitter, not only has it manage to survive, it’s actually thriving, and is a key player in the social media world. As is LinkedIn, which also has a very different focus from Facebook.A new social media start-up, WhenTheMeetingsOver.com (WTMO), obviously knows that. So, while it has many of the usual features that all social networking sites would have, its target market is different: Business people who would like to link up with like-minded people while overseas on business trips.
“WTMO embraces the fact that we are all busy and provides an environment to optimise our time online whether that’s networking, arranging a night with friends or looking for something different in a new city,” says WTMO’s CEO Stuart Dawson.
And, in distinguishing itself from the 800-pound gorilla that is Facebook, Dawson adds: “It’s not designed for the Facebook generation of soul-baring wall writers, but for professionals that require a purpose-built social network to enhance their work/life balance.”
Currently the site provides members with the latest business and lifestyle content through its city guides and blogs with categories like Business, Fashion, Sport, Entertainment, Travel, Food & Drink, Technology and Current Affairs.
It’s an interesting concept but they have two key challenges. With most business people already on Facebook and many on Twitter and LinkedIn, will WTMO be able to offer something compelling enough for users to adopt a fourth social networking site? More interestingly, what will it do if Facebook decides to offer something similar?
OON YEOH is managing editor of AsiaReach Media. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/oonyeoh.
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