Social Network: Collector’s Edition
Speaking with a friend recently about the fickleness of users, we inevitably came to the discussion of social networks and how users simply abandon one for the next.
The recent exodus from MySpace to Facebook, based solely on the amount of friend invites for Facebook in my inbox, would probably suggest how MySpace users are tired and bored of what they offer and see that Facebook has something at the least different. But in reality, there is probably more playing into this. Aside from MySpace’s spam issues and poor usability, user engagement has begun to dwindle. One of MySpace’s greatest points of bringing users back was the friend invite. A friend signs up and they want to connect, hence you come back and probably poke around the site for a bit while you’re at it. Eventually all your friends have signed up and you’ve connected with them all. It’s almost like collecting baseball cards. But once you’ve completed the set, now what?
The now what question seems to be the point at which users move on to something else. For some reason we as internet users have no problem creating new accounts, re-entering all the same data, uploading the same photos, and sending out invites to all the same people. Simply to start the same process over again.
Luckily, engagement is certainly evolving and the more modern social network tools are providing a reason to come back, and more than just to accept a friend invite. We can only hope that once you finish collecting your friends’ profiles you’ll be able to do more with them than just admiring your friend count.
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