

The Social Media Landgrab Is Over: Facebook, Reddit, And Twitter Won  - tmbsundar
http://www.fastcompany.com/1794851/the-social-media-land-grab-is-over-facebook-reddit-and-twitter-won

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halo
Reddit has changed to such a degree that plenty of its early users want an
alternative that doesn't currently exist.

The site is involved in a tug-of-war between users who want quality news
articles and those who want pictures and jokes, with the latter overwhelming
the site. It's not hard to imagine a successful competitor appealing to the
more mature crowd, especially since Metcalfe's Law does not apply to the same
degree with social news sites since a social news site only needs a few
hundred active users to be useful.

Facebook is very entrenched and difficult to compete with. It's the universal
identity directory that the Internet has always needed since the start. Very
hard to directly compete.

I'm still not sure I completely 'get' Twitter. I think it's used for many
purposes, many of which could be eroded by rather different and more
specialised services. Its 'spying on celebrities' niche seems pretty
entrenched, though.

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potatolicious
Now that Facebook has implemented "subscribers", and owners of pages can
broadcast to their fans, my use for Twitter is pretty much zilch.

I can hear from celebs, and I can hear about sales from my favourite stores,
and I can hear about where all the food trucks are for lunch. All without
visiting Twitter. It's a pretty big win.

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drewblaisdell
The search engine and operating system landgrabs are over too-- just look at
Windows 98 and Lycos.

\- 1999

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tmbsundar
and Orkut in 2002. Also I remember in one of the postings on early stage
Google story, someone remarked, when prompted to use Google that. "Thank
you..I use Altavista. no more serach engines" only to come back next year to
find out that Google was the more popular search engine then.

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scottmcleod
Hahaha-Except this isn't a landgrab when all you need is better user acusition
or value propostion. Facebook has won identity, but not networking. Twitter?
Reddit? Ask an average America, let alone global citizen what networks they
use, not either.

Lots of opportunity.

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twidlit
Where is Instagram, Youtube or Wordpress/Blogger in this? Google+ has yet to
be tightly integrated into Youtube, Android and Chrome so i wouldn't count
that out yet.

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Hrundi
I think Reddit is too US-centric. I really like Reddit, but communities from
all over the world are quite small.

World pageviews for Reddit must be very large, but when you talk about global
penetration, Facebook and Twitter are far, way far ahead.

I cannot walk 300 meters here in South America without seeing a billboard
selling me some shampoo, with Facebook and Twitter logos prominently
displayed.

~~~
cynest
I suspect it's also centered around a specific US demographic, say 14-30 as a
perhaps too large estimate, and doesn't have much to offer those significantly
outside it.

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bdfh42
There are so many (very) large niche areas available that new opportunities
abound. A specialist can (and should) outperform the generalist sites even
where supposedly specialist areas exist within them.

We are shooting for just one in a sporting area and I can't believe just how
big it is.

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aw3c2
That website seems like a "generate content for the sake of driving traffic,
regardless of what you write, just give us ad impressions" pool. I'd prefer
not to see such garbage.

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rooshdi
Ha, good one.

