I think it’ll be very interesting to see who can pull it off first: leverage the power of social network sites without pissing people off and making them hate you for being “The Man”. As with real life, any new movement online has an attitude of uniqueness, individuality, independence, and, as with real life, whenever someone tries to make money off of it, people shake their poking sticks. Nearly every free service online that has turned to fee-based has failed, so sites turn to advertisers to generate revenue. This is nothing new… that’s how we can enjoy things like network television, and broadcast radio. But unlike television and radio, the internet for the most part is still very dispersed and decentralized, which has it’s pros and cons for sure. It’ll be interesting to see where the visionaries of today lead the internet of tomorrow.
That being said, Yahoo recently acquired social bookmarking site del.icio.us, hot on the heels of their acquisition of popular social photography site Flickr. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Popular sites, as with subcultures, that start out “underground” can survive by going mainstream, but at what cost? Though history can give us some ideas as to what will happen next to these very popular sites, only time shall tell how things will pan out.
From the Yahoo! press release:
We’re proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we’ll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We’re excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We’re also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)
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