Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, the list goes on and on and those are just the ones I've subjected myself and my friends to. Are each of these (and the ones that will be released in the next period of time) just another web flavor of the month, or will any of them stick and be truly useful? Of course the Web 2.0 crowd treats them as movies these days and if they don't see a way for them to make money they get dismissed and passed over. Check out Dave Winer on this and check out more after the jump.
I've hit the ones above, and the two that seem to be the most useful to me are Facebook and Twitter, at the moment. Facebook might just implode on itself though. In a rush to add applications to do everything in the world it may collapse under its own weight. (Or that might be the key to its success.) That said, Facebook's ad strategy just seems silly. I've seen some pretty ridiculous ads pop on my network, (Washington DC-closest regional one to where I live). I've applied for a Wayside Theatre network in the workplace category, but haven't heard back yet, which is interesting for a theatre with 46 years worth of alumni tagging along with it. What I like about Facebook, is that, for the moment, it is a nice place to tie the different aspects of my wacky life together.
Twitter, whether by design or fiscal reality, seems to keep things simple. Intriguingly you can add your Twitter feed to Facebook, along with some of the others (Pownce). The whole presence thing is still a puzzler to me, but I find I get value out of seeing quick opinions and thoughts Twitter by about things that friends are doing or thinking that I wouldn't otherwise pick up on. I'd love to see Twitter develop groups though. That would push it over the top in my case.
Pownce allows me to enter info and display it universally to all Powncers and even send it over to Twitter. Jaiku can pull Twitter, blog, Flickr, and other feeds into its stream, but the updating seems to be slow and sporadic.
The others work as advertised but they seem relatively static by comparison to Facebook, or maybe they are just suffering from the rush to Facebook that is happening right now.
The value for me now is that I'm learning more and I am connecting more. Plain and simple that's it. That's where the juice is in my small corner of the world. And going back to that movie analogy, if these networks focus on their organizing principles and keep that value coming they will succeed. If the goal is to monetize, they'll flop. Opening weekends are flash in the pans phenomena. I don't think there is a DVD market to pull them out of the fire.
It will be interesting to see where this all goes. Already folks are complaining that there are too many networks to keep up with. (Read Michael Parekh's post on this.) Facebook has momentum at the moment and is getting the Scoble treatment, which doesn't hurt.
I'd say check back in a year, but there will probably be 10 more of these kind of applications on the radar by then. It will be interesting to see which of those that exist now still have traction. It will be more interesting to see which ones have value for me.
