Yesterday I was on a panel at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford University in Palo Alto. The conference itself is unusual - in a great way. It brings a wide range of investors and entrepreneurs together to talk about innovation and emerging trends. The 3 days are filled with notable people and great thinkers. It was a really great event.
The panel I was on related to the future of social media - specifically “Social Media Beyond Facebook.”I have to say it was one of the highlights of my conference participation over the years.
I say that because I really have respect for the entrepreneurs I shared the stage with, the intelligence and experience was landmark. Our discussion was really enlightening and i think we all came away feeling like we had illuminated some of the key trends that are influencing entrepreneurs who are building the next wave of businesses - post social enlightenment.
Bambi Francisco of Vator.tv led us through a series of questions that opened up several dimensions of discussion. Shervin Pishevar of Social Gaming Network, Max Ventilla of Aardvark and Clara Shih, author of The Facebook Era and founder of Heresay Labs and I threw the themes back and forth over about 45 minutes.
Key takeaways:
- Social networks are the new utility infrastructure for applications and products. All agreed that the traditional “ownership” of the customer is an outdated idea. Instead we are focused on offering value to users, seeking some of their attention in return.
- These networks serve a purpose that is fundamental and natural to the evolution of the Internet as a medium. The Internet has evolved from walled gardens (CompuServe & AOL) to destinations (Yahoo) to distributed atomic-level content and products, assembled on the fly at the user’s convenience in social networks.
- There is vast opportunity to create businesses that reach users within and across the networks. As usage patterns have migrated form destinations to self-focused sites, the opportunity has shifted. We now need to think of social networks as 1) a venue for distribution 2) a source of content. No solid business has a single distribution vehicle nor a single source of content. Nor a single venue for interacting with its users.
- There is a paradox - a low barrier to entry for new products, but a high standard for truly creating value. It’s easier than ever to create applications fo users, however sustainable companies must bring something unique to the picture that’s hard to replicate and valuable to the user. In most cases this is technology IP and infrastructure.
- Those companies that create real value need to be in the position to adapt in symbiosis with the networks.
- CRM is a critical dimension in the picture. Companies need to meet their customers where they are expressing themselves.
- Economic flows within the networks themselves are as of yet unsolidified - however there is full expectation that, when a solid economic construct emerges the participating companies will both benefit from and be subject to those economic flows. In fact, Collecta would be pleased to bear its share of the cost of infrastructure required to enable searching.
So, the future of Social Media? Social platforms are aggregators of users. To the user they provide an increasingly efficient way to stay in touch with the people and topics they care about. For the entrepreneur they are a rich opportunity to create products and services that are truly useful, entertaining or enlightening.
For everyone, they are evolving.
From my point of view, Collecta is in the position of finding the spontaneous, temporal value both within the social networks and in more traditional publishing venues and bringing that to users wherever they are. So Collecta’s strategy is simply that of a search engine: we want everything that’s relevant to our users. We also want to present that to them wherever it’s most useful.
We aspire to provide enough value that users will choose to spend some time with us.
Illustration and design by Kurt Aspland
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