Social networks have sailed

I’ve just been reading on TechCrunch about Yahoo and Google’s upcoming social networks. I can’t help but think that they’re far too late.

Social networking is a very difficult area for a new service to break into. How on earth are you going to persuade users of other, more established social networks to come to your service? Most people aren’t willing to go through the hassle of switching, as they can’t convince all their friends to move service with them.

Take Pownce for example. It will never convince me to leave Twitter behind, because I’ve taken the time to gather a good group of contacts. I’d only move to Pownce if my contacts moved too. But most users are already perfectly comfortable where they are and therefore won’t move.

There are some users that spread themselves across a variety of social networks. But if you’re relying on users to join your service as well as Facebook or MySpace, then you’re always going to be playing second. And to some extent Twitter and Jaiku already have that second place secured.

Often new networks find that they receive a huge amount of hype when they first open. This happened with Pownce for sure, but I can see the initial thrill of a new service dying pretty fast for most people. It certainly has for me - I haven’t ‘pwnced’ for almost a week.

In my eyes, it’s too late for any new social networks to be really successful. They’ve missed the boat, and the masses are too contented to be moved from one service to another.

Verdict? Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have got much of the social networking ground covered. We don’t need, and I don’t want, anymore.