Social Networking: The Present

Mark Suster Dec 4, 2010

Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part guest post by venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners on “Social Networking: The Past, Present, And Future.” Read Part I first, this one, and then Part III. Follow him on Twitter @msuster. This series is an adaptation of a recent talk he gave at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking.” You can watch the video here , or you can scroll quickly through the Powerpoint slides embedded at the bottom of the post or here on DocStoc.

Social Networking in Web 2.0: Plaxo & LinkedIn

In my last post, I discussed the origins of social networking online, beginning with CompuServe, Prodigy, the Well, then the rise of AOL, Geocities and Yahoo Groups. Next began the era of “spam-based” networks of which Plaxo (founded in 2002) was the king.  Co-founded by Sean Parker (yes, the same one who worked with Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of Facebook), it encouraged groups of people to email everybody in their email address books and “connect” on Plaxo so that when any of their contact information was changed online it could by synchronized with everybody’s local computer version and thus we could all stay in touch.

There was a backlash against the Plaxo spamming yet it paved the way for everybody who came after them to get users to drive viral adoption and we’d throw up our arms and say, “oh boy, here goes another social network that my friends are going to spam me about” mentality that made it acceptable for everybody who came afterward.

And come after they did.  While Plaxo never figured out what to do with us once we were all connected online, LinkedIn did.  They formed us into networks of networkers.  It was suddenly now not only about whom I was connected to, but who they knew and how I could get access to them.  We suddenly all wanted intros.  It added a new dimension to online social networks … business networking.  And they encouraged us to part with a lot more data about ourselves making LinkedIn our virtual resume.

And importantly Web 2.0 ushered in the era of “participation” – we all know that.  But less considered is the fact that the success of the Web 2.0 companies versus the Web 1.0 ones were enhanced because they coincided with hardware that allowed us to capture more content instantly – namely images and video – otherwide Web 2.0 might have been a lot less differentiated.  Suddenly we were all creating blogs on Blogger.com, Typepad & WordPress.  We started uploading images of ourselves to our blogs.

But the masses didn’t want to blog.  They wanted to publish pictures of themselves & their friends, share them, communicate with others, stay connected, have common experiences, find people to date, etc.  As I’ve said, it’s the same shit as the 1980′s – I swear.

Modern Social Networking: Friendster, MySpace & Facebook

We all know Friendster was the trailblazer in this category allowing people to create personal pages and connect to other people in a LinkedIn style but without the “business” and with a little more interactivity (let’s face it, for the longest time most users “friended” people on LinkedIn but then never really did much else).  But Friendster’s computer systems couldn’t keep up with the explosive growth (reportedly due to the complexity of the security model set up to control connections, privacy and authenticity of users) so MySpace was hot on the heels and swept up the market in a very rapid ascent.  Friendster was DOA.

And there it was – MySpace was growing at the exact time we all had cheap digital cameras, smartphones with cameras and new, cheap video cameras like the Flip that allowed us to create video.

Except that MySpace didn’t handle images or video well.  Luckily Photobucket & ImageShack did.  So users put all their photos on Photobucket & their videos on YouTube and shared them with their friends through MySpace.

Fox bought MySpace for $580 million and then did a deal with Google worth more than the purchase price to serve up ads.  For a nanosecond Rupert Murdoch seemed like the smartest guy on the Internet.  Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion, which at the time seemed laughably high and now seems prescient.  Google turned YouTube into one of the most valuable future Internet properties.  MySpace would have liked to own YouTube but didn’t have the public stock valuation to purchase them at the price that Google did.

MySpace later bought Photobucket for $250 million + $50 million earn out.  It did not have the same success as Google’s acquisition and MySpace sold Photobucket 2 years later to a relatively unknown Seattle-based startup called Ontela for a reportedly $60 million.

Murdoch seethed at these “startups” getting rich off the back of MySpace.  The conventional wisdom at Fox’s headquarters is that MySpace had “made” both YouTube & Photobucket by allowing them distribution.  MySpace vowed not to create anymore million dollar successes off of their backs that Google could then acquire.

So Fox ludicrously set up a quasi internal innovation center called Slingshot Labs.  The goal was to create innovations outside of MySpace and then MySpace would acquire them at pre-agreed prices based on how well they performed.  This was Politburo-style innovation and was laughable. I literally snortled when I heard that they were going to do this.  It was obviously a scheme set up by young entrepreneurs to line their pockets and some big-company executives who didn’t understand innovation.

Enter Facebook.  It had grown stratospherically from 2004-2007 to 100 million users, which actually was slightly smaller in December 2007 then MySpace was.  Facebook was everything that MySpace wasn’t.  It was: up-market, exclusive, urban, elite, aesthetically pleasing, ad-free and users were verified.  MySpace was: scantily dressed, teenaged, middle-America, design chaos and on ad steroids.

But the critical distinction in the direction of both companies was that while MySpace was putting up moats to keep outside companies from innovating and making money off their backs, Facebook took the opposite approach.  It launched open API’s and created a platform whereby third-party developers could come build any app they wanted and Facebook didn’t even want (yet) to take any money from them to do so.  So along come companies like Slide, RockYou & Zynga who wanted to build apps across all the social networks but were green-lighted the hardest by Mark Zuckerberg.

It was at that moment that a 22-year-old Mark Zuckerberg completely schooled the 75-year-old Rupert Murdoch.  Within the next 12 months Facebook users doubled to 200 million while MySpace stayed flat at 100 million.  The lesson was learned over 30 years in Silicon Valley: you create ecosystems where third-parties can innovate and thrive and you become the legitimate center of it all and can tax the system later.  Ask Microsoft, Autodesk or Salesforce.com – the evidence was there from Seattle to Sand Hill Road.

Facebook went on become larger than even Google and Yahoo! in terms of time spent on the sites.  Slingshot Labs was unsurprisingly closed within a short period of time and its properties sold-off or dismantled.  Duh.

Social Networking goes Real Time: Twitter

While Facebook was built on the idea that all our information was private and shared only between friend (before they changed this after the fact), Twitter was born under the idea that most of the information shared there was open and viewable by anybody.  This was revolutionary in thinking and worked because as a user you understood this bargain when you started.  Twitter is not the place to share pictures of your kids with your family.

Another Twitter innovation was “asymmetry” because you didn’t have to have a two-way following relationship to be connected.  You could follow people who didn’t necessarily follow you back.  This allowed followers to be able to “curate” their newsfeed with people that they found interesting.  Twitter restricts each post to 140 characters so users often share links with other people – one of the most important features of Twitter.  So this combination of following people you found interesting who share links drove a sort of “news exchange” that mimicked many of the features of RSS readers except that it was curated by other people!

Twitter is much more.  I’ve written extensively on the topic, but in a nutshell it is: an RSS reader, a chat room, instant messaging, a marketing channel, a customer service department and increasingly a data mine.

But what is magic about Twitter is that it is real time.  In most instances news is now breaking on Twitter and then being picked up by news organizations.

The one major thing that Twitter doesn’t have figured out quite yet is that platform thing or at least how to encourage a bunch of 3rd-party developers to build meaningful add-on products.  Twitter seems to have become a bit allergic to third-party developers (or maybe vice-versa).  18 months ago 25% of all pitches to me were ideas for how to build products around Twitter’s API.  Now I don’t get any.  Not one.  Yet the number of businesses looking to build on the Facebook platform seems to have increased.

Given I’m a passionate user of Twitter, I sure hope somebody there will re-read the MySpace vs. Facebook section above.  Lesson learned (to me at least) – let people get stinking rich off your platform and tax ‘em later.  That way other companies innovate on their own shekels (or at least a VCs) and let the best man win.  Close shop to try and control monetization and you can only rely on your own internal innovation machine & capital.  Seems kinda obvious or am I missing somethign?  Rupert?

Social Networking is Becoming Mobile: Foursquare and Skout

The trend that is unfolding before our eyes is that Social Networking is now becoming mobile and that adds new dimensions to how we use social networks.  The most obvious change is that now social networks become “location aware.”  The highest profile brand in this space is Foursquare.  Pundits are mixed on whether Foursquare represents a major technology trend or a fad but undoubtedly it has captured the zeitgeist of the technology elite at this moment in time.  At a minimum it has been a trailblazer of innovation that a generation of companies are trying to copy.

As our social actions become both public and location specific it opens up all types of future potential use cases.  One obvious one is dating where players like Skout are trying to cash in on.  When you think about it, young & single people go out to bars & clubs in hopes of meeting people to “hook up” with.  In a perfect world you’d like that person to be compatible with you in additional to being attracted to them, yet as a society we go into bars and have no idea what it behind any of the people we see other than the immediacy of their looks and whether we can get enough liquid courage into ourselves to talk with them and learn more.

It’s obvious to me that the future of dating will involve mobile, social networks that tell us more about the compatibility of the people around us.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how big people like Match.com and eHarmony became on the trend of helping us find our dating partners and why this would be improved my mobile, social networks.  How long this trend takes is unclear – but in 10 years I feel confident we’ll look back and say, “duh.”

FourSquare obviously brings up a lot of interesting commercial opportunities.  For years I saw companies pitching themselves as “mobile coupon companies” and I never believed this would be a big idea.  I’m not a big believer that people walk around with their mobile devices and say, “let me now pull out my device and see wether there are any coupons around me.”  I always said that if an application could engage the user in some other way – like a game – it would earn the right to serve up coupons as a by-product.  I think that is what Foursquare has done well.

In the future I don’t believe that Foursquare’s “check-in” game with badges will be enough to hold users interests but for now it’s working well.  I’ve always said that if Foursquare has a “second act” coming it could be a really big company.  In the long-run I believe that check-ins will be more seamless – something handled by infrastructure in the background.  So I expect more and new games from Foursquare in the future.  One awesome features of today’s Foursquare that often isn’t talked about is the ability to graph your friends on a real-time map and see where everybody is.  This is a killer feature for the 20 and 30 something crowds for sure.  Me? When I go out I mostly prefer to eat in peace with my wife and friends without people knowing where we are – I guess we all get old ;-)

In the next post I will make some predictions about where social networking is going next.  And only one hint —it isn’t all dominated by Facebook.  Stay tuned.  If you can’t wait you can get a sneak peak in the PowerPoint presentation below.

-----------------------------------------译文（转自译言网）-----------------------------------------------

本文是GRP Partners风险投资家Mark Suster发表的“社交网络的过去、现在和未来”三部曲的第二步。这个系列是Suster最近在加州理工学院/麻省理工学院论坛的“社交网络的未来”演讲的整理稿。请先阅读本系列的第一部分，再读本文，然后再读本系列的第三部分。你还可以通过这里开观看演讲的视频。

Web 2.0时代的社交网络：Plaxo 和 LinkedIn

在上一篇文章中，我们讨论了在线社交网络的起源，它从CompuServe和Prodigy开始，然后是AOL, Geocities 和Yahoo群组。接下来的基于垃圾邮件的网络中则以Plaxo（创建于2002年）为王。它由Sean Parker（他就是那个在Facebook早起和Mark Zuckerberg一起工作的人）合伙创办，通过给用户邮箱联系列表中的人群发垃圾邮件来让他们注册Plaxo，通过Plaxo连接在一起，以便当他们的信息变更时能够同步更新到所有联系人列表中，以达到所有人都随时保持联系的目的。

Plaxo这种垃圾邮件的形式有其不好的地方，但有时往往很有效。大多数人收到朋友们的垃圾邮件的时候，只好举双手表示投降：“哥们你看，我朋友又给我发了一封介绍社交网络的垃圾邮件。”但大多数人往往都能接受这样的垃圾邮件。

它们确实以这样的方式成功了。但当它们不知道该拿我们这些连接在一起的人来干什么事，LinkedIn知道。他们让我们成为了网络的沟通者。突然之间，这不仅仅是个“我跟谁交往”，还是“他们知道谁”和“我怎样认识他们”的问题。突然之间，我们都需要相互介绍。这为社交网络增加了一个维度——商业网络。他们还鼓励我们多参与其中，多贡献自己的数据，努力使LinkedIn成为我们的虚拟简历。

然而，我们都知道，重要地是Web 2.0开创了“参与”的新时代。鲜为人知的是，相比于Web 1.0公司，Web 2.0的公司和硬件一起为用户提供了更多的可即时捕获的内容，也即图片和视频以及很多其它东西。突然之间，我们都在Blogger.com、Typepad和Wordpress上建立自己的Blog。开始将自己的图片上传到博客上。

但是大众不需要博客。他们想将自己和朋友们的图片发布到网上去，将其分享，和朋友们交流，保持联系，一起玩乐，和找人约会等等等等。我发誓，正如我说过的一样，这些时代跟80年代一样都是狗屎一堆。

现代社交网络：Friendster, MySpace 和 Facebook

我们都知道，Friendster是让人们创建个人网页的开拓者，它还让人们以LinkedIn的方式和朋友们连接，只是没有“商业”的关系，取而代之的是多一点的互动性。但Friendster的计算机系统不足以满足用户的爆炸性增长，导致MySpace以非常迅速的方式占了空隙，并快速增长。Friendster是死在路上的一批。

然后就是MySpace了，它产生于数码相机和带摄像头的智能手机非常廉价的时代，并且Flip这样允许用户创建视频的摄像机也非常便宜。

MySpace不能处理所有的照片和视频。幸好还有Photobucket 和 ImageShack，因此用户们将图片上传到Photobucket，将视频上传到Youtube，然后在MySpace里分享。

Fox以5.8亿美元买下了MySpace，然后跟Google来了一场比这个交易价格更高的广告交易。仅一纳秒之内，Rupert Murdoch就成了这个互联网上最聪明的人。Google当年以16.5亿美元收购了Youtube，这在当时是非常可笑的，但现在看来确实非常明智的。随后，Google将Youtube变成了这个世界上最有价值的东西。当年MySpace本想收购Youtube的，但是其出价没Google的高。

随后，MySpacer以2.5亿美元买下了Photobucket，并追加了5000万美元。这项交易还是没Google的交易成功，然后MySpace就将其以6000万美元转卖给了一个西雅图的名为Ontela的创业公司。

这些公司在背后赚着MySpace的钱，Murdoch非常气愤。Fox总部一贯这样认为，是MySpace造就了Youtube和Photobucket。而MySpace则永远都不能再创造下一个百万美元的成功，因为它是注定要被Google收割的。

因此Fox非常滑稽的创建了个名为Slingshot实验室的准内部创新中心。目标是在MySpace之外创造新产品，然后通过考察他们的进展让MySpace在议前收割。这是类似政治局决策机构似的创新，非常可笑。这明显是一群年轻的企业家另搞的一套模式，目的是为了中饱私囊，并且忽悠某些不懂新技术的高管。

然后就进入Facebook时代了。它在2004到2007年之间平滑的聚集了1亿用户，这比2007年的MySpace还少。MySpace没有的，Facebook都有。它是面向高档市场的、排外的、城市的、精英的、造型美观的、无广告的并且用户经过认证的。而MySpace则是衣衫褴褛的、青少年的、中产阶级的、设计混乱的并且多广告的。

但关键的分歧在于两个公司的方向的变化，当MySpace关起门来做自家生意拒绝别的公司从其腰包里掏钱时，Facebook正好相反。它们开放API，并且为第三方开发者提供开放平台，让他们能够从Facebook赚自己的钱。他们让Slide、RockYou和Zynga这样的公司简单的在自己的社交网络中创建自己的应用程序，将最难的部分留给Mark Zuckerberg自己。

就在那时，22岁的Mark Zuckerberg教育了下75岁的Rupert Murdoch。在接下来的12个月里，Facebook的用户翻倍，达到2亿，而MySpace的用户则停留在1亿。这就是30年以来硅谷给大家上的一课：你为第三方公司创建得以生存和繁荣的生态系统，而作为系统仲裁的你可以随后向他们征税。问问Microsoft、Autodesk和Salesforce.com吧，这样的现象从西雅图到沙丘路到处都是。

Facebook变得越来越强大，以至于Google和Yahoo!这样的大公司都在其上面花了些时间。而Slingshot实验室则在短时间后被迫关闭，相应的部门也解散了。

实时社交网络：Twitter

Facebook建立在所有的用户信息都是私有的并且只在朋友之间分享的原则之上，而Twitter则认为所有的信息都应该开发并且任何人都可见。这是革命性的思考，并且很有成效，因为当你作为其用户使用时你知道这样的代价是怎样的。Twitter不是用来和你家人分享你小孩的照片的地方。

Twitter的另一个创新是“不对称”，因为你和别人之间不是一定要建立相互跟踪的关系。你可能跟踪别人，而别人可能不一定会跟踪你。这可以让跟踪者制定自己感兴趣的东西的跟踪源。Twitter另一个最重要的特性在于将每条信息的字数限制在140字以内，这样就可以让大家分享链接。这种组合可以让你和别人之间分享链接，从而交换新闻信息。

Twitter远不止这些，针对这个话题我还扩展性的写了些东西。总而言之，Twitter是RSS阅读器、聊天室、即时通讯工具、营销渠道、客户服务平台，并且也越来越是个数据矿井。

但Twitter的威力在于其实时性。许多时候，Twitter里的新闻都被打碎后又被媒体重新捡起。

Twitter还没怎么搞出来的是一个能够让第三方开发者开发有趣的附加产品的开放平台。Twitter对三方开发者似乎变得有点过敏。18个月以前，我所碰到的所有问题中25%都是关于围绕Twitter API如何开发新产品的想法。现在，我也没发现有任何进展，一点点都没有。然而，想要在Facebook上开展业务的数量可是越来越多了。

如果我是一位Twitter重度用户，我当然希望有人重看一下上节中关于MySpace和Facebook的讨论。我学到的经验是，让别人尽情的从你平台上赚钱，然后向他们征税。这种方式是，让所有人都从自己这里赚钱，然后自己做好好人，笑到最后。关起门来做生意，你只能依赖内部的创新和资本。我说的是多还是少呢？

移动式社交网络：Foursquare 和Skout

现在展现在我们面前的是移动式社交网络，这又为社交网络增加了一个维度。最重要的改变在于，社交网络现在能够“感知位置”了。这方面最具有代表性的公司是Foursquare。对于Foursquare是代表一种技术趋势还是时尚，专家们也一时说不清楚。但毋庸置疑的是，它捕获了当下技术精英们的时代精神。至少，它是在一个只有拷贝复制的时代的一种开拓一种创新。

随着社交行为的公开化和位置化，它为未来所有潜在的应用开创了新例。最明显的例子就是，像Skout这样的人会在哪里聚集gamble(敏感词不让翻译^-^)。你正在想这些的时候，年轻的单身汉们已经出现在酒吧或俱乐部寻找他们下一个约会对象了。在完美的世界里，你希望人们能够和你和谐共处，并且你还能吸引他们。然而，在这个社会中，我们进入酒吧或俱乐部，不知道别人是什么背景，光从外表上看也不知道自己是否有足够的勇气上去和他们搭讪进而深入了解。

很明显，未来的约会需要移动设备和社交网络来告诉我们周围的人是否跟我们合得来。当然，即时是火箭科学家们也不知道有多少人知道Match.com，eHarmony是否会成为我们寻找约会对象的新趋势，以及为什么这些都可以通过移动设备和社交网络来改善。这个趋势需要多长时间实现，谁也不知道。

Foursquare明显带来了许多有趣的商业机会。多年以来，我看见有些公司自称为“手机优惠券公司”，我从不认为这是个什么伟大的想法。我从来都不太相信身边有手机的人哪天会这样说：“让我掏出手机看看附近是否有优惠券。”我一直认为，如果真有那种应用能够让用户体验另一种方式——就像游戏一样——他就能赚的很好，并且将优惠券作为自己的附属产品。我认为这正是Foursquare目前所做的。

未来，我不觉得Foursquare这种带有徽章的签到游戏能够长久的吸引多少用户，虽然现在还算可以。我一直这样认为，如果Foursquare还有另一手，那它真能成就一个大公司。未来，我相信“签到”这种方式毫无意义——它只是些背景性的基础设施。因此我也希望Foursquare能多搞些游戏出来玩玩。Foursquare还有一个没提到的很酷的特性，那就是用户能够看到朋友们的实时地图，并且知道他们在哪。这是个杀手级功能。我外出时，一般只想和妻子或朋友安静的吃一顿，不想被别人打扰——可能我老了吧，呵呵。

下一篇文章中，我将预测一下社交网络的走向。现在只给一点点暗示：它不会被Facebook完全垄断。敬请关注！如果你等不及了，现在可以偷看下幻灯片。