Douglas Carswell's Blog

Social media - fad or forever?

The social media site, Bebo, was once worth $ 850 million. Today, we learn it was sold for $ 1 million – back to its original founder, Michael Birch.

Bebo will not be the last social network site to rise dramatically – then fall. Long before I had heard of Google, I seem to remember using a search engine called Alta Vista. Then Yahoo.

I would not be surprised if something comes along one day and usurps Facebook. But maybe not Twitter. Why?

The reason I suspect we will all still be using Twitter-based applications in years to come is that Twitter is an open system. You can come along, invent something, and incorporate a lot of what twitter does into it.

Facebook is more of a closed system. Unless it becomes an operating system in its own right, I suspect it is vulnerable.  Apparently the amount of time that facebook users spend logged in is in decline.

Whatever the platform, social media is more than just a fad. Its ability to aggregate friends, family, ideas, designs – indeed pretty much everything – will only grow.  Far from atomising society the way the doomsters tell us, social media bring us closer together in all kinds of ways. 

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