The Silicon Alley Insider reports that that people (namely America) are not as hot on social networks as they used to be. The numbers show that the audience for sites like MySpace and Facebook attract have reached their limit or are very close to it.
Basically put, MySpace and Facebook are old hat. Both have tried in desperation to infuse their respective systems with new life by having developer perks but users of the system aren’t really wowed by that at all.
What SAI says that really hits the mark is that it appears the audience for social networking is not infinite. While some would say that this medium of social interaction has limitless possibilities, that’s just flat-out wrong; there is a limit and it’s being reached.
[Source: Silicon Alley Insider]
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“While some would say that this medium of social interaction has limitless possibilities, that’s just flat-out wrong; there is a limit and it’s being reached.”
If you are talking about structured websites then maybe. I would say that the limit is not even close to being reached with socialization over the web. I hardly see a bubble bursting, Facebook and Myspace are new. Just like American cell phone industry, with your logic it should burst also. It’s called market saturation which is not the same a creativity limits. Supposedly we saw the “limit” of computer in the 1970s.
I don’t think online social network is fading away. The market is just going to hit the saturation point, as we have seen in the cell phone industry. That’s why mobile carriers in the U.S. are starting to push more devices with expanded data capabilities. The voice cell phone market hit a limit of available new subscribers, so they are shifting to a “new” type of device for the market to try to keep the ball rolling.
Facebook should look to grow in offerings and expand in marketing (where do they get their revenue?), but it shouldn’t expect to add new users at previous rates. As for MySpace, what’s that?