A World of Connections - Economist Survey

A Special Report on Social Networking

30 January 2010

Global Swap Shops - Why Social networks have grown so fast--and how Facebook has become so dominant

• Network Effect - Value of a communications network to its users rises exponentially with the number of people connected to it
• Takes a while for social networks to reach its first million; once that happens, the numbers rise exponentially, as well.
• Multi-Feed (Facebook) searches databases almost instantly for relevant friend news.
• My Space's decline - faced with demanding revenue targets from News Corps, it neglected its technology and added new features like job listings that ignored its core users' interest--it got too cluttered for most people; its social network market fell from67% to 30% in September 2008

Towards a socialized state--The joy of unlimited communication

• The next big thing will be geo-networking apps, which use virtual data to broker real-world encounters.
• Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter are building businesses around this idea--asking people to add their whereabouts to their tweets will allow advertisers to direct services to people as they move from place to place.
• Sir Tim Benners-Lee - Weaving the Web

Internet was meant to be more of a social tool than a technical one.
Ultimate goal was to come up with something that made it easier for people to collaborate with one another.