socialmedian: Real-time social wars: where's the money?

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Real-time social wars: where's the money?

Source: clipotech

Aug 25, 2009

Summary

So, I've been studying Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, and Google's Wave and other things for some time.

Last week I also visited Yelp, which is growing at a million new users PER MONTH.

Twitter is growing at about 4 times that rate. Facebook is growing about 2x that rate.

So, these are the big players. It's clear that they are getting massive adoption. I don't see that slowing down or stopping for any of these players.

But where's the money? To figure that out you've got to see where they are coming from. What is their usage model?

Facebook's? They built the rolodex of the web. They have the white pages. Sorry, Yahoo, you are toast there. TechCrunch reports that Yahoo wants to be the place people go for social search. That's done. Facebook is it. Strength? They are the white pages. Weakness? Not much interaction with brands and businesses.

Google's? That's where you go to search for most things. Especially businesses. Looking for Sushi in Palo Alto? You go to Google. I also go there to find people's emails, blogs, and Twitter accounts, but they don't have that loc

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Comments (2)

Eyebee,

Aug 25, 2009

Perhaps I'm stubborn, or set in my ways, or just old school. OK, I use many social media services, but for my primary online communication, it's still email for me.

I have a facebook account, and shove things into it, mostly from other services, but I can't say that I've embraced it.

Google, on the other hand, I use for email, docs, maps and IM.

Twitter is great for concise messages, and in fact, I don't even know the phone numbers of many local bloggers nad geeks, I simply Tweet at them.

Sometimes, I bemoan the fact that there are so many social media services around. So much to look at or update. In truth, although, I've joined many, my own habits have, over time, determined which I use most, and which I use so little, I've forgotten about.