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Facebook, Google+, and Myspace; How to Win (and how to lose) the Social Network Game

It’s no question that Facebook is at the forefront of the social network industry; When one thinks of a “social network,” that iconic Facebook blue page often comes to mind. However, it wasn’t always as definitive as this. Facebook can be seen as a third-generation online social network, a product of continuous refinement within the industry. In its early days, Facebook faced competition from social media giant MySpace but somehow managed to overwhelm its Goliath. Within two years, Facebook had surpassed Myspace in users and today, Facebook is #2 in traffic with MySpace at #1,673. How did one company beat the odds and turn the tide so quickly?

Facebook’s success can be largely contributed to the bloat of MySpace; Pages were becoming crammed with superfluous clutter, and the tacky, early 2000’s aesthetic began to lose popularity. In comes Facebook at the right place and right time, with it’s simple user interface and lightweight, responsive interaction experience. To MySpace users, Facebook was a leaner, meaner website…and more importantly, it was growing at an alarming rate. Here we can see Facebook set off an almost complete cascade of adoption. Facebook’s inherent superiority as a site and its allure as a new experience led to a large number of initial adopters, and a lower threshold needed for people to switch. In addition, since the most important aspect of a social network is its users, since people’s friends were quick to adopt Facebook, a torrent of people followed suit. Before MySpace could fight back, Facebook had won.

Facebook is regarded today as one of the “Big n” of Silicon Valley tech companies – it remains soundly within the ranks of companies such as Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft and other titans. In recent times, Google has shown up as a threat to Facebook with its Google+ network. Up until it was released, Google had a good reputation for refining and almost perfecting existing aspects of the Internet – everything it released quickly became the norm for its sector. Google Mapsfor example, was incredibly popular and overshadowed other sites quickly. However, Google+ failed to cultivate the users that it needed, and so it never became as large of a threat to Facebook as many thought it would be. Why did this happen?

Google+, created by some of the top minds in the tech industry, from a company which was reputed to produce high-quality services and had a huge following, had its merits. Facebook was and is still becoming bloated with third-party additions and advertisements and is suffering from a decrease in quality content and an increase in invasiveness. Google was trusted, and it had a better reputation. Google+ was clean and simple, and sign-up was incredibly easy as it linked to everyone’s GMail or YouTube accounts. However, its flaw laid in the timing of its release and the aspects of social network adoption. Facebook was ingrained into society already; it had its own ecosystem of applications, and Facebook became many times larger than MySpace ever was. Google would have to have created something mind-blowingly amazing to even get enough initial adopters; However, Google+ was just a website, and even if it was slightly better, Facebook was just too well-known. Without enough adopters, Google+ found itself too stagnant in growth, and an adoption cascade was never started. Today, Google+ is still a great website from a great company…but Facebook is just too popular. Perhaps in the future, as Facebook continues to grow and lose the idea of what it began with, another website can come over and do to Facebook what they did to MySpace.

 

Sources :

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happened-to-google-plus-2015-4

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/06/myspace-what-went-wrong-sean-percival-spotify

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