Is There Enough Space for Another Social Network?

With the insane success of Facebook (now 500 million accounts and 140 million uniques a month) and the decent success of Twitter (close to 20 million uniques a month) everyone wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Now with Google rumors floating the idea of a new social network apply named “Google Me” in the works, we need to ask ourselves do we really want another social network?

Social Success

Any social network relies on one extremely important element to it’s success. NUMBERS! There is no point to be the lone user on a social platform. In fact the integrity, power, and future use of a network can easily be measured by it’s current accounts and it’s ability to grow.

If we rewind to 2 years ago we’d see several versions of similar social networks competing for market share. Facebook v MySpace or Twitter v Tumblr, etc… Now we can easily see a natural progression to one single network in each genre. Facebook and Twitter clearly being the leaders in personal networking and LinkedIn presiding over business social networking.

As users of social networks we want to keep things simple, now more than ever. We want a singularity, one stop shop where we can update and consume content with out having to do it in 10 different places. There used to be hundreds of places I could potentially feel good about posting a photo of my son and I playing ball. Now it’s on Facebook and possibly twitter if I think it’ll get a laugh. Flickr is still a predominate place for networking around media but again it has it’s place.

Another Network In The Mix

So where will Google Me fit? Just like Google Buzz I think we are looking at a social network with an expiration date of about 6 months from their launch date if they continue on the same path these rumors put them on.

I would imagine Google’s plan is to launch their new social service to all their current Gmail users. Forcing their users to press a “Join” or “Remind Me Later” button between logging in and viewing their Gmail account. This is pretty much exactly what they did with Buzz.

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