Here’s a question that’s been running through my head ever since Michael posted about FriendFeed being in danger of becoming the coolest app no one uses: exactly how many startups out there are trying to be the one social networking service aggregator to rule them all, and how many is enough?
It seems like every day startups come up with new applications, be it for desktop, Web and/or mobile phone, that essentially want to be the gateway to our online lives. In reality though, there are not that many people who want – let alone need – continuous access to multiple social networking services, and even if they do, how many people (outside of the tech industry) do you know who are genuinely waiting for a extra third-party that helps them manage all their online personas?
Is this a sucker’s game? Is it a battle worth fighting?
For example: how many clients exist that basically aim to lure you away from using Twitter’s standard web interface by adding more features to the core micro-sharing functionality and throwing in more eye candy? And yet, the Twitter website remains, by far, the most popular way for users to update their message streams, with dozens of apps like TweetDeck, Twhirl / Seesmic Desktop, PeopleBrowsr, AlertThingy, Sobees, Streamy, Tweetie, Nambu, TwitterBerry, and HootSuite trailing in its path (and there are many more where that came from).
Don’t even get me started on the plethora of apps that syndicate FriendFeed feeds alongside Facebook and Twitter to deliver the best-user-experience-known-to-mankind when it comes to updating your social graph on your current status. It’s the ultimate social networking service aggregator update management tool, baby!
All these applications appeal to only a fraction of the users of the more popular social services, many of which are still trying to figure out how to turn all that attention into cold hard cash themselves. I’m not necessarily saying that that’s a reason not do get into that business, I’m just saying chances are little that they’re ever going to be able to turn it into something even remotely profitable.
I sincerely think we’ve seen enough of these social network aggregators, and while I’m sure one or two will live on, get acquired or turn out to be a successful venture in another way, most are destined for failure like most startups in any other market, especially if they’re as saturated as this one has quickly proven to be.
I’ll sure be pointing back to this post when the next contestants in this particular arena find their way to our inboxes.
Agreed, social network aggregators are a dead game as pulling content from different sources and putting it at one place isn’t going to encourage a user to switch from the basic service to aggregator service like FF but what I find inteteresting is the new breed of social network organizers like gizapage.com that allows you to manage multiple social profiles easily and effectively.
So Gizapage is NOT cheese?
I think so:) , you can visit http://vijay.gizapage.com/ and see how different it is compared to my FF account at http://friendfeed.com/amnigos
Being female and novice user friendly is imp for success. Which so called aggregators rather confuse and scare away.
i likes cheese… is it maded from albanian goat milks? can it download from Iphones app store, like fart app…
I don’t get how this gizapage is different than FF or any other social network aggregators.
Gizapage.com basically organizes our social network profiles in tabbed fashion or just like pinning on wall
instead of pulling content like FriendFeed style services.
So “iframe” in another saying.
I don’t know technically how they are handling or embedding different social profiles but personally I feel convenience in using service like gizapage because it saves my time instead of open-close-reopen urls of various social web services I use many times a day. Also I see it has value for corporates or businesses or not-for-profit’s to manage their social identity easily at one place
.
Maybe the real cheese is no more in social networks aggregation but in people interests aggregation.
How exactly is Twitter the “the most popular way for users to update their message streams”, when 75 per cent of the network does this via an external ap? It might be the single-most popular way to update your Twitter status, but having a quarter share of your own database is a bit of a dubious honour. And that number has been dropping each and every month by about 2-3 per cent.
That aside, I disagree with your general point completely. The aggregator that makes the promise you’ll never need to go anywhere else – and, most importantly, delivers on that – will ultimately be the one to rule them all. It needs to be pick-up-and-play simple but have a huge depth of tweakable layers to appeal to both the ’soccer mum’ and the programmer ubergeek, and all in-between. And it isn’t Friendfeed, because it’s too complex and fiddly for the MySpace/Facebook generation.
I think Google Wave is potentially the closest thing we’ve seen to this so far, at least on paper, but we’re a few years away yet from the all-encompassing application I’m envisaging. It will happen, and I imagine Google will be the ones to do it.
Actually, the fact that external apps using Twitter’s API make up the majority of clients used, while not one of them beats the web interface as the top gun, is exactly the point I’m making (that there are so many vying for that spot).
And you’re not completely disagreeing with my point, because I agree there will be one or two that will stand out. But I don’t know if one can create something like that and make it ‘less complex than FriendFeed’ (seriously?).
That’s the opinion of the masses, yes. FF has has only just reached 1 million uniques/month, about 1/20th of Twitter’s stats and 1/100th of Facebook’s.
It’s early days for both Twitter and Friendfeed, of course, and I think that’s why so many are vying for Twitter’s API share. It’ll be interesting to see if the same things happen to Facebook and Google. However, it’s still an oddity that Twitter only commands 25 per cent of their actual audience, which is why so many of these ‘usage’ surveys always come with an asterisk. (The reason why is obvious, of course, as the experience on Twitter.com is extremely limiting. I’d wager that 99% of those people who don’t get or never get into Twitter have only experienced it via the home page).
The reason why I’m disagreeing with your point completely is because you said “I sincerely think we’ve seen enough of these social network aggregators”. En masse, I would agree, but one or two “living on” is not the same as one being all-dominating, which is the future for social media as I see it. I do agree, however, that there are too many right now, certainly for Twitter, which leads me to conclude that the right one, the one that actually does everything, will ultimately emerge as the winner. But by then it won’t be seen as an aggregator at all, much like Google isn’t really seen as a search engine, even by itself.
The winner, as Goose suggests below, will be the already-established social networking site that welcomes in all the others, and everything else. It may well be Facebook that does this. Whether that’s the result we all want is very much up for debate. I personally would prefer Google – they’ve certainly got the tools, talent and infrastructure in place.
unless a large social networking site is the aggregator itself, it won’t get mass adoption.
Very important point you’re making here and I totally agree what you’re saying.
Every other day, I see a web page claiming that they do something with twitter’s titillating APIs. At the end they all do nothing, other than feeding twitters giant growth. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but they are doing something pointless and wasting their times in terms of converting the effort into actual revenues.
Too bad some many smart people keep running behind the dream of aggregation.
It’s not easy to stand in the market.Social market is on big competition. Some start-ups survive in the Net World and some fails due to lack of handsome users and best content.It is worthless to collect the content from other sources.
I agree on the article, but that is the Present.
What if online presence increases and the amount of signed up communities is a multitude of what it is now, are people really going to log on each and every social network?
Wouldn’t aggregators come in handy to manage the never ending increasing online transportability?
Best regards,
Gianluigi Cuccureddu
I agree that there a lot of social network aggregators out there. And seemingly more every day!!! Personally, I’ll keep looking at them all, and trying them out, because I’d like to eventually settle on one aggregator. So far, there isn’t one that does all that I’d like it to do.
where does power.com stand in all of this?
people would leave fb if they had a greater strategic niche offering catering to their core audience.
will there ever be a for business social network phenomena? i dont think linkedin.com has filled that void.
NewLocator.com – social detox
A meaningful post about vanity in technology, but do we care, no way I am gonna use a new switch on another switch…;)
Indeed it is!
A colleague of mine said to me the other day that most people don’t have time to worry about anything other than maybe Facebook, Amazon and maybe one or two other sites. He is right. Aggregation sites are essentially for geeks. They will never be mainstream because most people don’t have time to join 10 different websites.
Kids, TV, jobs, wives… Viagra I guess keeps us busy doing other things.. who cares about myspace… who cares about most youtube videos..
Looking back for clues can be risk but to frame your argument a bit:
http://en.wikip...of_web_browsers
The primary difference today is that you can have a browser in your pocket. That same device would also let you pump updates via SMS or an IP interface (http).
On the desktop, I’m not sure this will play out the same way since there are now more platforms that are viable (Mac -and- PC) in this race to account for an ecosystem to live within.
Previously, nobody noticed Mac it seems… or mobile devices that might cross over into something desktop like (Android/BlackBerry/iPhone) in how applications are delivered, distributed, and consumed/used.
http://media.ar...marketshare.jpg
I think the “battle” is waged in terms of attention span and how much money one views as a metric of success. Or… with open protocols considered:
Does this really have to be a horse race?
I wonder who is going to really innovate here? There must be something going on under the hood at Streamy…
I’m happy to be wrapped into that category for the time being, but we will move well beyond it.
Don
Streamy
Aggregation is a lazy excuse for a product strategy — whether for auctions, social networks, etc. It’s what you do to piggyback off the hard work of others when you really have nothing to add to the conversation.
No surprise that they will struggle.
Aggregators make sense but also big networks can play that role.
I think Aggregators have a great future and will be profitable as well as the content owners that syndicate will make money with a revenue shared advertising model like the one we are working on.
Our business project goes around a whole new advertising model that unlocks the monetization of Social Networks. We are looking for the right Partner in the Online Advertising Social space with the power to set a new Industry standard. If you can connect us with the right Partner please wite to fransvv@teleline.es .
Managing just one twitter profile becomes manageable when using TweetDeck. There is no way I would use Twitter’s main interface to filter through thousands of irrelevant tweets about someone who forgot their towel so jumped straight into soaking clothes (who cares?)…
Instead TweetDeck filters for you. TwitterBerry keeps me updated with tweets that teach me, whether from O’Reilly, Techcrunch, GigaOm or Guy Kawasaki and the BBC.
Managing just two profiles means twitter is a nightmare to manage without Seesmic Desktop. Aggregation is underestimated.
I agree totally, however, that startups need to be innovative about how they intend to monetize off these products. Surely if they solve significant real life problems, with an online solution – the value or monetization will come as a natural consequence of viral growth an adoption? This is Freemium. If they fail, and nobody wants to subcribe to premium services, then the problem was too small. One service will prevail. We need tools to manage our information. We need a toolbox to organise our tools.
You don’t see builders dropping their tools over the edge of a building. They care for them, keep them close and organised in a tool belt. Even in a recent copy of .net David Recordon provides his perspective on the future of the web. Worth a read.
Lastly, even on the BBC Click OK program the presenter did not understand the value of twitter. Her audience certainly did not have a chance at understanding it either. Nevertheless, early adopters and viral growth seems to be helping Evan cross the chasm. Just as we didn’t all understand twitter, it seems we also do not appreciate the potential value of aggregation.
PS:I just searched Google to give you guys the link to the netmag link to David Recordon in the March 2009 issue. Ironically, or not, the top of the google results is David’s own Tweet crawled and ranked number one by google – a freindfeed result!
http://friendfe...me-about-future
if you keep calling FriendFeed “the coolest app that nobody ever uses” you are gonna make @louisgray (FriendFeed’s lone fuckin’ user) cry.
http://twitter.com/MarkMayhew
Long live http://www.friendfeedfeed.com!
ha, totally forgot about that one!
At twillage.com we aggregate tweets by city and date/time
We try to add value by extracting signal from the streams.
That is what google did with pagerank to extract signal or what tweetmeme does on twitter
I agree Robin. Since Twitter has a mainstream audience, most of the folks simply don’t care about these tools.
Friendfeed may surprise us though, and remember that the innovation (most of it anyway) that we know Twitter for came from users over time, so I wouldn’t rule out their potential given the early life of the platform.
I find it interesting that the original post ended with comments about profitability because everyone’s comments have been focused on usefulness and success. At the end of the day these multi-homed IM and Social Management tools (like digsby) don’t need many users to be profitable because they basically have no cost base. Just push out the software and maintain it. No network, no bandwidth, no operations. Put a few ads in the client, install a few toolbars, and revenue can quickly exceed expenses…
Yes, but scale matters–if you are profitable with just a million in revenue, that’s great but if it’s in the context of a $60 million investment your investors would likely want you to scale it. Twitter’s last round was $35 million.
Then again, the play there could simply be to exit for $2 billion to Google, MSFT, Apple, or some other public company.
Personally I think the right aggregator can do very well and be useful–but it’s all about the UI and value add. Simply putting everything in one place doesn’t necessarily make it valuable or better for me. A computer screen isn’t a lot of real estate to work with given the high level of noise across multiple services and sites
I agree with Swag above.
Aggregation – with a few exceptions – has been a major fail (from a monetization perspective) across the board.
All the start pages – Netvibes, Pageflakes, etc… are they making any money?
Is Digg in the black?
Will your mom use chi.mp?
What about RSS aggregators? Bloglines, etc…
Ultimately, like email, these aggregators will be run by larger media concerns that can subsizide non-revenue generators (e.g. Google Reader; iGoogle) with other income-generating streams.
Fwiw Netvibes is generating decent revenue.
Hey Tom Herman,
How about some examples?
How I wish all these smart people would devote their time and resources to creating something of value. Good god, social network aggregators? No wonder our economy is a disaster. The best and the brightest are creating stuff that no one really needs and not charging for it either. Social aggregators make the ShamWow look like the cure for cancer. How about using all that money and programming talent to create services that teach kids how to read and write, so they don’t spend the rest of their lives terrified by anything longer than 140 characters?
+1
american kids education FAIL
Isn’t Aggregating a bit similar to Links?
Google has shown everyone the importance and relevance of Web Links.
But so far apart from Facebook and Twitter no one else has shown those same values in aggregating your Social Networks, along those lines.
There is a tremendous opportunity out there for the next ‘Big Thing’, by a Company that can Aggregate all elements of the Web for anyone that uses it, with a viable business model.
I am currently developing a project that explores all of these avenues and much much more.
Social Networking Aggregators are The New Cheese.
But an Aggregated Platform can truly Milk the next Big Cash Cow?
Well done, you garnered a lot of comments. Sign of an engaging post. From the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, the best social network aggregator will create new market space or a blue ocean. Moving from the ‘red ocean of bloody competition’, think Nintendo wii for gaming industry or Cirque du Soleil for circus. Meanwhile I enjoy the competition, provides me a rich source for blog and presentations as you did with this excellent article.
Robin,
I agree with your point completely…..and, as the CEO of a company that some people mistakenly consider an “aggregator”, I’m quite pleased with the accuracy of your post. That’s because I believe the aggregation discussion/feature is not what is interesting or relevant to the human condition…..it’s filtering and prioritization. Even unpopular people on Facebook have 100’s of friends….the famous “Dunbar #” (from anthropology/social sciences) says that our brains are not equipped to track the details of more than 147 people….for this reason (disrupted trust models) early hunter-gatherer tribes split apart at this number.
What we really need is a technology that acts like a very intuitive/observant “Executive Assistant”, who learns about the people/agenda’s that are most important in our lives. It then uses this knowledge to promotes the right things to my attention, and shuffles the rest off to the junk folder. The same is true with one social site or 20—aggregation has nothing to do with it—the real issue is using (implicit and explicit) knowledge of agenda, context and social-tie-strength to prioritize and filter without bothering the user with the details.
Thanks for helping us shift focus to the much more relevant conversation.
Dewey
All these sites are lame
Yo what’s up with that Leo smackdown O
I know your not going to blow that off ?
very interesting post!
feels like a sucker’s game – the only ones worth paying attention to feel like Xobni or Xoopit – where they anchor to an existing core daily utility like email…not sure any standalone site will EVEr make sense for this niche…
interesting post! let me introduce to a new social networking website
http://www.whzzz.com is a fresh, new concept in online social networking. But it is not just another site to complicate your online social life. In fact, it allows you to organize and combine all of your online profiles such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Linkedin, and Multiply into just ONE “Whzzz Key” profile.