This is a post I originally wrote for BumeBox.com
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Online networks allow you to create, share, and discover more now than ever before. More is not better though if the increased activity is not connected and meaningful. Thus the successful consumer internet companies of 2012 will connect the loop on creation, sharing, and discovery and make their network more valuable at every point in the cycle.
There are a couple main reasons behind this upcoming trend. The consumer internet is a free market where superior networks flourish and inferior networks fail. In this economy companies must push their technology forward to compete. So consider a counter example: removing a creation or sharing or discovery feature from a network that already has it successfully integrated. In an environment where your every competitor is constantly innovating, standing still or moving backward will be the death of your business. Therefore, companies will be adding creation, sharing, and discovery features in 2012. The companies that win will figure out how to loop them all together in a meaningful way.
The other indicator of this upcoming trend is that some prominent companies are already tending towards it. The most obvious example is all the web/mobile services that require Facebook or Twitter to login. This adds instant sharing and to a lesser extent discovery features to a network that would otherwise live in a void. Facebook itself just added a Suggested Event feature earlier this week which is surely intended to be a discovery tool. Twitter has recommended accounts (discovery), Quora has added Boards (sharing), LinkedIn this year added status features (sharing), the new Delicious has given links more meaning (creation). Some companies like Instagram and Eventbrite are good at all three.
Ultimately no network can stand still and survive, they have to do more to attract and retain their users over time. For the networks that can't quite pull off creation, sharing, and discovery there will certainly be some collateral damage. But the ones that do will thrive.
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Online networks allow you to create, share, and discover more now than ever before. More is not better though if the increased activity is not connected and meaningful. Thus the successful consumer internet companies of 2012 will connect the loop on creation, sharing, and discovery and make their network more valuable at every point in the cycle.
There are a couple main reasons behind this upcoming trend. The consumer internet is a free market where superior networks flourish and inferior networks fail. In this economy companies must push their technology forward to compete. So consider a counter example: removing a creation or sharing or discovery feature from a network that already has it successfully integrated. In an environment where your every competitor is constantly innovating, standing still or moving backward will be the death of your business. Therefore, companies will be adding creation, sharing, and discovery features in 2012. The companies that win will figure out how to loop them all together in a meaningful way.
The other indicator of this upcoming trend is that some prominent companies are already tending towards it. The most obvious example is all the web/mobile services that require Facebook or Twitter to login. This adds instant sharing and to a lesser extent discovery features to a network that would otherwise live in a void. Facebook itself just added a Suggested Event feature earlier this week which is surely intended to be a discovery tool. Twitter has recommended accounts (discovery), Quora has added Boards (sharing), LinkedIn this year added status features (sharing), the new Delicious has given links more meaning (creation). Some companies like Instagram and Eventbrite are good at all three.
Ultimately no network can stand still and survive, they have to do more to attract and retain their users over time. For the networks that can't quite pull off creation, sharing, and discovery there will certainly be some collateral damage. But the ones that do will thrive.
