John Battelle on Facebook

Thursday July 12th 2007, 7:22 pm Printer Friendly Version
Filed under:World Wide Web, Social Networks
Posted By: Matt

John Battelle posted a short “wow Facebook is hot right now” piece which is basically an extended introduction to an intriguing question: why is Facebook so damn hot right now?

I think the answer is related to the well-known technology hype cycle. (Mark Andreesen had a funny take on this recently, and I’ve talked about it in the past.)

Everyone sees the social networking space as a winner-takes-all-proposition. So what will determine the winner? Well, usually it’s the player who managed to generate the most hype and excitement. Facebook has done a great job attracting attention, and has now crossed a notional threshold where people see it as the most likely eventual winner. At this point a virtuous cycle takes over. The more hyped the site is, the more obvious it is that it’s going to be the last man standing. This results in even more hype and an ever-ballooning potential valuation. Rinse, soak, repeat.


1 Comment »

  1. Hmm… I’m not convinced yet. I know all of *two* people on Facebook. API aside, their navigation and member-discovery system absolutely sucks, so unless you are a college student with a huge network, you’re basically a lone wolf in the system.

    Plus, Facebook is just another contender in the Centralized-Command-and-Control world view of the Internet. I’m more a fan of P2P services, and there’s no reason why every person’s computer can’t also be “their space.”

    Comment by Richard Tallent — 7/15/2007 @ 7:28 am

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