One last thought about Dave McClure’s Facebook platform panel earlier today at the Web 2.0 Summit. I was struck by an observation from RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda that the battle for dominance in social networks, at least in their current generation, is rather winner-takes-all. He said, “one social network wins the whole high school.” In the present pre-portability era, even teenagers don’t want to take the time of maintaining multiple social networks: email IM one social network is enough (if not too much).
This could play out one of two ways: Either social networks will keep their walls up to force individuals to choose, or they will open up in the hope that they’ll get the customer even if their competitor does, too. History suggests it’ll be the former followed by the latter. For those sick of maintaining multiple profiles, let’s hope the players work through the cycles quickly.
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