It’s not a real stretch to say that Facebook is the social media tool of choice. It’s been about seven years since it really caught on and it shows no signs of slowing down. Various social media sites have tried to take the Internet crown but so far, none have succeeded.
The most recent competitor is Ello, a social networking site that claims to shun ads and selling information to third parties. With backlash against increasing privacy violations on Facebook, it could be easy for Ello to poach disgruntled Facebook users. But not getting ad revenue means that revenue has to come from somewhere else – the users. Whether or not it will be a success is still up in the air, but considering the track record of other websites trying to take the social media crown, that’s unlikely.
The following are social media sites that tried to take over Facebook and why they failed:
Google+
I don’t really have a definite answer for why this one failed. I can give you two reasons why I never migrated to Google+: The first is that Google was trying way too hard to make me use it. Every Gmail user suddenly had a Google+ account and the option to click on Google+ was always there at the top of my browser, mocking me. No one tells me what to do, Google. This move came around the same time that everybody with a Google username had to use it to post and comment on Youtube. I don’t like to use my real name in a cesspool like YouTube as I’m the only one in the world with my name, making me easy to track. I had to read carefully and try very hard to keep Google from using my real name in YouTube comments. These two things made me disenchanted with Google and avoid Google+ out of spite. The second reason is simple: none of my other friends were on it. It makes me sound like a sheep, but who wants to be the only person on a social network?
Eons
This is a social marketing site marketed to baby boomers and had a minimum age requirement of 40. By doing that, the team behind Eons was cutting a big portion of the market. And more than that, they were cutting off the biggest portion of the market that even uses social media. It existed for six years.
iTunes Ping
This service was marketed to music lovers and let people see short posts from artists and friends. It existed from 2010 to 2012. And the reason this one failed is that once again, no one was on it.
Okay, some concrete reasons: users could not link the service with Facebook, it was full of spam, and was only available in 23 countries.
So what makes a social network succeed? Twitter, Instagram...these services offer things that are different from Facebook. Instagram makes it easier to share pictures – with the world, if that’s what you want. With hashtags it also makes it easier to search every user’s pictures. Twitter makes it easier to advertise your life and thoughts with a wider audience. Its other big strength is that it’s easy to interact with celebrities and other notable people. And unlike lots of Facebook fan pages, most celebrities’ Twitters are written by them and them alone. It’s a way to get up close and personal with someone you admire without PR people or reporters acting as a middleman.
Facebook makes it easier to see what is going on in your friends’ lives at any given minute. Social networks fail when they try to emulate Facebook. Ello could be yet another social network that will fade into the ether in a few years, but maybe its stripped down approach will let it succeed with people tired of the narcissism and commodification so evident on Facebook.
