Once the two darlings of the web 2.0 world, Facebook and Digg, in their own ways, are demonstrating that this new world of media is not as lovely as many hoped it would be. The former is controlled and stifled by its owners, the latter by its users.
When Facebook first began it was a way for people at University to keep in touch. Initially only available to Harvard students, it gradually expanded and in 2006 it was opened to everyone.
At first the site was a breadth of fresh air after MySpace became a horror of a social networking site. Users left in droves and discovered that all their friends were now on Facebook. For years people have happily uploaded all of their photos onto the site, detailed many personal aspects of their lives and generally used it as the online version of their life. (Within my own social circle every event and meet up is organised via Facebook.)
Then Facebook realised that they needed to make money to survive, just like every business. But this went against everything their users had bought into. And here lies the crux of the problem – how do they monetize the site without irritating and losing their users?
I wrote a post a few weeks ago about the changes Facebook have made to their pages, which sums a lot of what they’re getting wrong. They are trying too hard, making too many little changes and not addressing the key problems of privacy and advertsing.
Digg
Digg became popular due to its simplicity and ease of use. When I started using the site it was to find interesting and useful articles, about technology, politics, news etc. I discovered some brilliant sites, started to make friends who gave me brilliant recommendations via the ‘Shout’ function. It gave me the kind of optimistic love I now have for Twitter – it’s why people make the internet great. They build these fantastic social sites and fantastic people find them and create great content.
Now Digg has become just another place where social media super users and spammers control the content. The most popular things online are not necessarily the best – cats dancing, a panda sneezing etc etc. This has led to Digg becoming controlled by a few sites offering similar content. You can still find gems, but this shift in emphasis has meant that many of the users that made it great are now gone.
General Trend
The internet is at a tipping point. With so many people now on Facebook the potential control is scary and they are going to have to be even more careful now that their privacy is being scrutinised and users are losing patience. While sites that aggregate content are going to have to find ways to prevent super users driving away everyone else.
Great post Tasha. I’m of the opinion that, for a social-media tool to be truly succesful, the user has to be rewarded with ‘what they wanted in the first place’ – I use Facebook to find out what my friends are doing (in real life not in Farmville) and I used to use Digg to find cool new things in the design industry (until things got messy). I once had a MySpace profile to discover new music (until Myspace became saturated with teenage American kids).
Twitter now does everything that these three used to do; it can give me what I want, when I want it, and quickly, without having to trawl through the rubbish. And if not, I can tailor my feed to suit my requirements.
I just hope everything continues this way and that I’ll never have to say I was once a Twitter user!
Thanks Richard. And long live Twitter in all its glory!