Twitter vs. Pownce: The Great Debate
Or is it Twitter vs. Facebook?
Or is it AIM vs. Yahoo! Messenger vs. GTalk?
Or Facebook vs. LinkedIn vs. MySpace vs. . . .
Okay. You get the picture.
Is this a ‘winner take all’ game, or can we expect that people will use many different services for some time to come?
It is most likely that everyone reading this post uses at least two of the services mentioned above and there are countless others out there. Those are just some of the big ones.
Not to mention, we are on an unstoppable path toward data portability. That is, it shouldn’t be long before moving our data between these services becomes incidental. It’s happening now.
The commonly held theory about a marketplace such as this is that it will consolidate to two or three main players, as has historically been the case, and this is somewhat true already.
But that’s the thing about the web.
It may be that Yahoo! photos is more popular than Flickr, but just try persuading the Flickr users to change. Since both companies are owned by Yahoo! it ’s certainly possible that they would merge, but that may be a long, slow move.
Flickr has a much more dedicated following than JotSpot, which was recently folded into Google Apps. It would be a more complicated merge.
I digress, somewhat, because even if consolidation is inevitable, we are only on the cusp of the explosion of new services to be created.
The glasnost occurring with customer data will fuel countless new services that will use that data in innovative ways. Many of these services have already been conceived but never gained traction because they couldn’t attract a critical mass fast enough to make them stand the test of time.
So let’s agree that we currently use a number of these services, and likely will find new and interesting ones to add to our arsenal in the coming years.
Let’s further not debate that one service is better than another (in most cases), but that each has it’s own merits and will attract it’s own followers. Look at the automobile industry for proof that one size does not fit all (literally, in that case).
Are we doomed to bounce between these services and to own accounts in more than one of each of these verticals?
Probably, but I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as it sounds. In fact, I think we are seeing the worst of it right now.
We need inter-op. Everyone knows that, but let’s not hold our breath and wait for the big players to fall into line. That might take years.
The smaller players will cooperate because they have more to gain. A few semi-big services (like Twitter) have shown the willingness to be open enough that it’s workable.
If we create our own marketplace, the big player will have to follow, or risk diminishing their mind-share and stature within our Attention spectrum.
How do we create our own marketplace? By flipping the coin on these services with the help of the smaller and more cooperative ones.
In a highly VRM fashion, through individual action, we can force these services to come to us. If they want to be part of our social fabric, they’ll need to play by our rules.
Many readers are now thinking the author is speaking of a pipe dream. I disagree.
All that we need to do is take active control of our data, something even I am guilty of not doing. Once we have done that, the game is over.
Here’s how:
1. We need a single sign-on. Despite the great progress with OpenId, many important services don’t offer this. (Listening Twitter?)
2. We need a unified interface to communicate with these disparate services. that is, read and write to each from a single point of contact.
3. We need a backup of our rivers of communication that is stored in a portable way.
4. The social graph needs to be stored in a distributed manner. Lot’s of progress being made here as well.
That’s it. I hope I can help.