Question: What Will Emerge as the Next Great Social Network?

I get asked all the time what is emerging as the next great social network. I still believe it will be a network of sites powered underneath by technologies from Facebook, Google and Twitter. But in the interim, I am sure there will be some new site that comes along and captures the hearts of geeks - just as Twitter, and to some degree, Friendfeed did. I would love your insights here.

In the first chart in the gallery that follows I plotted the four sites that I am hearing about a lot at least from friends in my circle - Foursquare, Posterous, Brightkite and Squarespace (which is really an amazing CMS, not a social network per se). I ran their traffic stats through Google Trends and compared them to Friendfeed as a base. Posterous right now is the leader. If they add deeper links to Twitter and Facebook, I bet they will grow.

The one major site that's missing from this list is Tumblr. Their traffic trumps all of these other sites combined. So why not include them? Because to me, Tumblr is already mainstream. It never lit a fire with geeks, but according to Google Ad Planner data, also in the gallery below, it's catching on with a younger set - 81% of its users are under 44. And over 60% don't have a college degree - at least yet. So I think they're scaling the other side of the road to glory.

What's your view?

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17 comments

Aug 16, 2009

arjunram said...

There were no road blocks for Facebook/Twitter. Both of these networks road on internet/sms. The Problem with - Foursquare, Brightkite is they need specific applications that would need GPS or Assisted GPS. While its started to become ubiquitous in the US that is not the case in other parts of the world- atleast not yet.

Aug 16, 2009

Scott Magdalein said...

I definitely think Posterous has the best chance of becoming the "next top social tool."

Aug 16, 2009

Chris Grayson said...

It will definitely be something mobile, and likely in the AR vein.

Aug 16, 2009

Yaniel Cantelar said...

going by the chart you posted, if posterous keeps growing like it's been, it's going to be the dominant force. And i hope it does, because its a service i've grown very fond of. For some reason friendfeed has never appealed to me for content creation, i only go on it to see what others have posted. i like the simplicity of posterous, like twitter, what you see is what you get, so you have to concentrate more on content than page design. As for squarespace, its an amazing site but the fact its pay only will certainly hold it back.

Aug 17, 2009

Alan Weinkrantz said...

Posterous is the next BIG thing.

Aug 17, 2009

BruceBarber said...

I'm a big fan of Tumblr - easy to use, customizable, and the code is VERY Google-friendly.

Aug 17, 2009

Stuart Foster said...

I'm convinced that Foursquare is the next Twitter. Simplistic, easily integrated and monetized. I'm currently killing myself to get a meeting with these guys.

Aug 17, 2009

rikin said...

Is it possible to frame this as a similar situation to AOL during its heyday? AOL was used by many as their portal to the web. Here's your mail, here's your browser, and here's some content to make you happy. AOL was a gatekeeper to the internet.

What if all of our current platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Posterous, Tumblr, et al. are simply gatekeepers to the social network? We're simply putting data out there and these guys are controlling the delivery, organization, and ways by which we consume it all.

I long for the day where I upload a video not to Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. but just to the internet. Replace video with photos, status updates, blog posts, or whatever else you can think of and we arrive at a true open internet.

Maybe what we need is not just OpenID but the OpenPlatform where we are platform agnostic. Facebook and Twitter would just be layers that we can use to help us organize all this data.

In the meantime, I think Tumblr may have a better shot at this than some of the other platforms you mentioned. http://trends.google.com/websites?q=tumblr.com%2C+posterous.com%2C&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Aug 17, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

@Rikin I believe this is where Google could get interesting, but they got a long way to go.

Aug 17, 2009

rikin said...

Google would be interesting but to be truly open wouldn't we need some organization that is completely unbiased?

Aug 17, 2009

Jay Berkowitz said...

Steve:
I always love your keen eye to the future. Thanks for making us think!
How do you think Google Wave and its real-time interaction will change the game among Social Networks?

Aug 17, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

Remains to be seen just how pervasive Google Wave will be. What's known is that everything is getting more instantaenous and connected and social.

Aug 17, 2009

nicheslayer said...

Posterous and Tumblr are pretty good streaming solutions, but I don't see their social aspects being any more dynamic than what I'm doing right now -- commenting, as I would on any enabled blog. What seems to be lacking, and what FriendFeed does so well (and Facebook ripped off) was the melding of conversations, and the organization inherent to the application. I haven't seen that same thing yet.

A lot of Google Reader talk is going on right now--even comparisons to FriendFeed--but it lacks immediacy and a genuine sense of connectedness.

Thanks, Steve!

Aug 17, 2009

Stephen L. Harlow said...

We need to be able to drag and drop messages into streams. GWave is probably too complicated until it hits its 3.0 What I think we want now is linked sticky notes we can drag into any service, drag one to the other.

In the mid-term ahead, GWave may be the force holding all the pockets of discussion together, in the short term, with all our existing services, we need to to make one dragging gesture and accomplish what is now takes three gestures: select, copy, paste.

Aug 18, 2009

Aviraj Saluja said...

@nicheslayer

I understand when you say that Posterous is not very social right now. But I can bet that it is going to enter the social game in a BIG way through its acquisition of Slinkset. I'd love to know what plans they have for it but one thing I know for sure -- whatever they come up with, it's going to be as awesome as everything they have till date.

My vote is definitely for Posterous.

Aug 18, 2009

labfly said...

have wandered around Posterous, and although i like it - i'm not convinced it will have mass appeal for the same reasons others have stated above. just not very social. its also not an easy in and out. i taught my mom and my 9 yr old nephew to use twitter in one sitting. Posterous will take a bigger commitment.

still nice and simple and SOCIAL (ala twitter) BUT with multimedia built into the conversation (rather than links) is Zannel. not betting on it being the next big thing - but wonder why it hasn't caught on - and now seems to be overrun with celebrity news spam.

my vote is it isn't out there yet.

Aug 19, 2009

Stephen L. Harlow said...

Agree, Posterous is awesome. I'll be interested to see how adding
Slinkset to the company will change it. Being able to vote up
comments, stories, sites. will help. Tracking popular, will get
posterous in the social game more than sharing (which they've done
well).

I hope for that. At the same time, I hope that federated, distributed
service deliver to us more than any one service can or should. I want
to pick my tool set of the 4 or 5 social web services that I like and
have the content I create and favor interact seamlessly with the
content on the services you've picked for your tool set.

In the discussion below Rubel's post, the desire was expressed that we
eventually gain the ability to post the internet, not just to FaceBook
or YouTube.

While, we've been able to post into our own web space since the
beginning of the web, we need social discovery, tracking of friends
and trusted sources as well as popularity to allow our posting to
reach a meaningful audience.

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